Senate Republicans are now considering a new addition to their "big, beautiful bill" of tax cuts for President Donald Trump, Politico reported: a bailout fund for hospitals at risk of shuttering due to the bill's Medicaid cuts.
The version of the bill passed by the House already cut $600 billion from Medicaid, in part by enacting new draconian work requirements and bans on people who fail to meet them from accessing Affordable Care Act subsidies. But the Senate wants to go even further, slashing "provider taxes" states use to get fund-matching for the program — a move that rural hospital executives have warned could be devastating and leave many areas without medical providers at all.
Even some pro-Trump senators are concerned this could hurt their states, but Republicans have a new idea to get them on board.
"Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and Finance Chair Mike Crapo of Idaho are in talks with Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Josh Hawley of Missouri, among others, over how to address their concerns that scaling back the provider tax, which many states use to fund their Medicaid programs, would negatively impact rural hospitals," wrote Jordain Carney and Robert King. "One idea under discussion is to establish a fund for rural hospitals that would be impacted by the changes to the provider tax structure in the party-line domestic policy package, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private negotiations."
“I’m looking at whether there would be receptivity to a provider relief fund that would be aimed at rural hospitals, nursing homes and community health centers,” Collins said.
Republicans are currently unsure exactly how large they would have to make this fund, which would eat into the savings they were trying to use to balance the impact of the bill on the deficit in the first place.
Moreover, noted the report, there's no guarantee this fund will assuage swing-district Republicans in the House, who had to be reluctantly brought on board even to vote for the lesser Medicaid cuts in their version of the bill.
