New reporting from Heartland Signal reveals that the dangerous Republican spending bill, signed into law Friday by Donald Trump, makes significant cuts to Medicaid and threatens the critical access hospitals (CAHs) in rural areas that heavily rely on federal funding to stay open.
CAHs were essential in treating victims of the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when a shooter killed 21 people and injured 17 others. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Uvalde Memorial Hospital, a CAH, became a destination for critical emergency hospital care due to its proximity to the school.
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- Under President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” funding for rural hospitals that treated victims and helped save lives in mass shootings like the one in 2022 in Uvalde, Texas, would be threatened.
- The budget and domestic policy bill, which received final passage in the House on Thursday and is slated to be signed by Trump by the Fourth of July, cuts a total of $1 trillion in Medicaid over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Republicans made the cuts to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy and increased defense spending.
- The Medicaid cuts are especially devastating to rural hospitals around the country, according to a Washington Post report published last month. These include critical access hospitals (CAHs), emergency health facilities that cannot exceed 25 beds and “receive higher government payments because of the communities they serve,” according to the Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb. According to the Rural Health Information Hub (RHIhub), there are 1,377 of these CAHs as of last April.
- Despite their size, these critical access hospitals were essential in treating mass shooting patients within the past few years. The most notable example in recent history happened in Uvalde. When a shooter killed 21 people at Robb Elementary School and injured 17, Uvalde Memorial Hospital, a CAH, became “ground zero for critical hospital care” because it was the closest health care facility to the school, according to a 2022 report from the Texas Hospital Association. Within 15 minutes, the hospital was treating four adults and 11 children.
- When a drive-by shooting killed two men and injured three other people in Hollister, Calif. in March 2022, local reporting noted that at least two of the survivors were taken to and treated at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital. That hospital is a 25-bed facility that serves the city’s population of 41,678, according to a database maintained by researchers at the Flex Monitoring Team.
- There were also several mass shootings in the past few years where the closest available hospitals were CAHs, according to the Flex Monitoring Team. A mass shooting at a June 2024 block party where six people were shot happened in Sylvania, Ga., a town with a population of 2,621 and serviced by the award-winning Optim Medical Center-Screven facility. The Hu Hu Kam Memorial Hospital serves the Gila River Indian Community in central Arizona, which was the site of a mass shooting in June 2024 that killed two people (including a police officer) and injured five more.
- In May 2024, a gunman killed two people and injured two more in a mass shooting in Gallup, N.M. According to the Flex Monitoring Team, the western New Mexico city with an estimated population of 20,339 is served by a CAH, the Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services facility. The Golden Plains Community Hospital is a CAH located in Borger, Texas, a small city which was the site of an October 2023 mass shooting that killed one person and injured three. And a mass shooting in June 2022 that killed one and injured six occurred in Blakely, Ga., a city with an estimated population of 5,276 that is served by the Early Medical Center.
- In response to national outcry that the GOP megabill would close hundreds of rural hospitals, Senate Republicans doubled appropriations for a rural health fund from $25 billion to $50 billion. But that funding will only last for five years, making some on the left call it a “Band-Aid” for rural hospitals and CAHs.
Read the entire article on the Heartland Signal website.
Published: Jul 7, 2025 | Last Modified: Jul 9, 2025