Big Beautiful Bill: Impacts on Connecticut’s rural hospitals

“You can’t sit there and take something from someone that’s a basic need because you want to keep the wealthy happy,” one health care worker said.

PUTNAM, Conn. — The “Big Beautiful Bill” (H.R. 1) is now law, and people in Connecticut are concerned that the legislation’s changes to Medicaid and Medicare will impact its rural hospitals.

The bill is set to make changes to Medicaid, including cuts to federal Medicaid funding and work requirements.

“You can’t sit there and take something from someone that’s a basic need because you want to keep the wealthy happy,” said Lisa Benghazi, who works in health care.

Naysa Jones worries for the people who rely on Medicare.

“You have people that live off of state insurance, Medicare through dental and mental health services,” she said. “All that is going to be taken away from them and there’s going to be a decrease in the population because of it.”

President and CEO of Day Kimball Health Kyle Kramer said the bill will impact rural hospitals.

“Rural health is uniquely recognized as its own entity and health care in small and rural areas is indeed very different than that in large urban areas,” Kramer said.

The Senate proposed a program that would allocate $50 billion over five years to support rural health care. While the Rural Health Transformation Program (Title VII – Finance, Subtitle B. – Health, Chapter 4, Sec. 71401), intends to allocate $10 billion amongst states for each fiscal year from 2026 to 2030, nonprofit National Rural Health Association worries that it would not “offset” cut funds and would instead create a shortfall for rural hospitals.

“The proposed Rural Health Transformation Fund by itself doesn’t offset the cuts to Medicaid coverage. The changes to Medicaid will result in significant coverage losses, reduce access to care for rural patients, and threaten the viability of rural facilities,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, in a statement published June 30.

“We’re already concerned about Medicaid payments for those services, and in a small area like ours, we actually have a large payer mix,” Kramer added. “Seventy percent of our payer mix is either Medicare or Medicaid and for the Medicaid portion, we already have challenges financially covering the cost of providing that care, so cuts will certainly be a real challenge, which obviously has us looking at every aspect of what’s included in the federal budget.”

Some say this is going to hurt the elderly and vulnerable population.

“It’s bad enough that you have the elderly, that can’t speak for themselves who have aides, who have to be their voices and we’re not heard now,” Benghazi said. “Imagine when you pull that and they need medication and transportation.”

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