Ohioans deserve truth from Kennedy on funding for rural health

Tomorrow, when the City Club of Cleveland hosts Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ohioans concerned about rural health care deserve to hear the truth about what last year’s federal budget bill (H.R. 1) will cost their communities.

During H.R. 1 negotiations, Ohio was flagged as being home to 11 of the nation’s rural hospitals that would be at risk of closure or service reductions as a result of the budget’s cuts to Medicaid.

While Secretary Kennedy has joined a chorus of leaders in celebrating a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund (RHT) that was added to H.R. 1 as a purported fix for rural losses, the funding is nowhere near enough.

Nationally, H.R. 1 is expected to cost rural communities $137 billion in lost Medicaid funding over ten years. The Rural Health Transformation Fund will award a total of $50 billion nationally: just over one-third of these losses.

Ohio’s rural communities are expected to lose $5.62 billion in Medicaid funding over ten years. If the amount we were awarded in year one ($202 million) remains constant over the RHT’s five years, this funding would amount to just 18% of rural Ohio’s anticipated losses.

Beyond being too little money, RHT funds must be spent by fall of 2032, right in the midst of H.R. 1’s Medicaid cuts hitting their hardest.

Simply put, this does not add up to meaningful, adequate relief.

Secretary Kennedy has acknowledged what Ohioans know too well: Rural health care providers were struggling to stay afloat even before the budget passed — and these providers are critical to their patients and employees. But the RHT’s already inadequate funds are explicitly not meant for “backfill of operating budgets” but to “rebuild and reshape” rural health care services.

While RHT funding is being spent on some valuable projects, states are also capped on how much of the funds can be used for covering basic operational expenses. This leaves rural providers between a rock and a hard place: tasked with transformation while also fielding deep cuts to operational funding.

During Congressional testimony in April, Secretary Kennedy repeatedly stated that staggering cuts to Medicaid hadn’t even occurred. But Ohioans know: Spin-doctoring healthcare cuts isn’t the same as investing in the health services our rural communities need.