As the year kicked off, U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards touted a grant for rural hospitals in North Carolina. But experts say that small piece of funding represents a fraction of the hit in Medicaid funding suffered by North Carolina hospitals after $50 billion in spending cuts in President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.
That dulls much of the excitement for $231 million from the Rural Health Transformation Program. That was a fund also set up in the Big Beautiful Bill to make up for changes in Medicaid.
Edwards last month said that funding would be vital to North Carolina’s rural counties. “The program has worked exactly like we intended for it to work. We’ve got a lot of work yet to do to improve our healthcare system in America,” Edwards told WLOS.
But NC Medicaid leaders say the changes in the tax package, one Edwards supported in the House, don’t cover losses. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in a presentation to state lawmakers said changes to Medicaid eligibility will mean $49.9 billion in losses to NC Medicaid over the next 10 years.
Meanwhile, the $231 million over the next five years will provide just over $1 billion over the next five years.
Mountain Area Health Education Center CEO William Hathaway told Asheville’s ABC affiliate that the grant announced by Edwards does little to offset the damage coming from adjustments to Medicaid. And those changes will hit rural institutions especially hard.
“They’re critically dependent on Medicaid and federal dollars to stay afloat. So when you cut those services for the hospitals specifically, there’s great risk to their financial viability,” Hathaway said.
That has Democrats in Washington hammering Edwards for trying to take credit for hospital funding that barely dents the losses delivered in the same piece of authorizing legislation.
“Chuck Edwards wants credit for doing the bare minimum when he’s the one to blame for this rural health care crisis in the first place,” said Madison Andrus, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
“Edwards didn’t save the day – he’s trying to cover his tracks. If he wants to kiss the ring of Republican extremists who want to decimate rural health care the least he can do is not lie about it.”
The DCCC has listed Edwards as one of 24 House Republicans most at risk of being unseated in the Midterms this year.
Edwards, for his part, touted his vote for the Big Beautiful Bill last year. House Republicans claim the bill is focused on eliminating waste and fraud in the Medicaid program.
“This bill will deliver approximately $1.2 trillion in federal spending cuts, securing historic reductions in our government’s deficit over the next decade to get our nation on a solid fiscal trajectory while protecting critical programs like Medicare and Medicaid,” Edwards said in a statement in July.
But the resulting $1 trillion cut in Medicaid revenues means fallout for rural institutions that heavily rely on the program. The Charlotte Observer identified five North Carolina Hospitals at risk of shutting down because of the cuts. That includes Blue Ridge Regional Hospital in Spruce Pine.
And a DCCC analysis predicts 39,000 constituents in Edwards’ district could be kicked off their health insurance because of Big Beautiful Bill changes.
