Rural hospitals ‘at risk’ after Trump, Congress, slash Medicaid

 by Tim Wheeler

Photo by Pixabay

Updated: 08/17/2025

​The Olympic Medical Center (OMC), the only public, full-service hospital on the Olympic Peninsula, is at grave risk of closure or privatization if Congress passes President Trump’s budget bill calling for $880 billion in Medicaid cuts. That was the warning from Robby Stern, a leader of Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA), speaking in a ZOOM meeting of PSARA’s Executive Board on May 15. Congress has now passed the Big Bad Bill with those cuts.

OMC serves 11,000 people on the Olympic Peninsula, one of the most isolated communities in the nation. It is about a two-hour drive on narrow highways to get to hospitals in Silverdale, Bremerton, or Seattle — three or four hours for those living in Neah Bay, LaPush, or Forks. In cases of heart attacks, baby deliveries, and other urgent services requiring immediate care, a drive that long could mean a death sentence.

Stern, President of the PSARA Education Fund, told the meeting that rural hospitals are especially “at risk” if Congress approves the huge cuts because they depend on Medicaid for 40% or more of their operating budgets. In 2024, the Safety Net Assessment Program, the Washington State agency that oversees Medicaid funding, approved $12 million in supplemental Medicaid funding to OMC, literally keeping the hospital open and functioning. That program faces total termination under the Trump budget scheme.

Stern said the most immediate danger to health care is the drive by Trump and MAGA Republicans to slash Medicaid, stripping 13 million Medicaid enrollees of all health care protection, many of them children. The cutbacks will also inflict ruinous debt on scores of rural and public hospitals serving low-income people. It is coupled with $230 billion in proposed cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) providing free and reduced-cost food to millions of poor people, especially children.

The OMC Executive Board is currently in secret (?) negotiations with a number of private hospital chains on a “strategic partnership” to ease the financial crisis. OMC has a chronic fund shortage because Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates fall far short of covering the rising cost of health care. There is widespread fear that Providence, a Catholic hospital chain, may be accepted as OMC’s partner, putting in danger abortion rights and end-of-life care that may be banned by Providence. Already there is widespread talk that vital services like obstetrics and gynecology will be slashed as part of the so-called “strategic partnership.” Across the nation, more than 200 rural hospitals have gone bankrupt in the past 20 years and 100 have terminated labor and the delivery of babies.

A small bloc of Republicans in “purple” districts fear they may be ousted in the next election because of their vote to slash Medicaid and SNAP.  In an op-ed in the New York Times, MAGA Republican Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) denounced the “Wall Street wing” of the Republican Party who are “politically suicidal” in voting for this Robin-Hood-in-reverse cut in funding for medical care and food for the poor in order to lavish more tax giveaways to billionaires.

Stern cited Republican Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington State’s 4th Congressional District (CD). Newhouse is one of a handful of Republicans who voted to impeach President Trump and, last November, defeated MAGA Republican Jerrold Sissler, a rabid Trump supporter.  The 4th CD is the most Republican district in the state and includes Moses Lake, Yakima, and the Tri-Cities (Richland, Pasco,
and Kennewick). The district is 51.1% white, 39.8% Latino, 2.2% Native American, and less than one percent African American.  Medicaid is provided to 38% of its residents which is certain to give Newhouse pause in voting to slash this life-saving program.

In California, Republican Representative and dairy farmer David Valadao of Bakersfield represents the 22nd Congressional District carried by Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by 11 percentage points over Trump.  In the most Democratic district represented by a Republican in the nation, two-thirds of the 22nd’s residents are on Medicaid — the highest rate in California. Valadao, too, may be pondering whether he has committed political suicide.

The U.S. Heart Association released a statement, recently: “These funding reductions would jeopardize access to affordable health care and food for millions, shifting the financial burden to patients and families … For more than 50 years, SNAP has been a cornerstone in the fight against hunger and poverty, supporting one in five children in the United States … Deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would have devastating ripple effects on children who rely on these meals.”
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Speaking out against the Trump-Musk budget to starve children and poor people and heap billions more in tax giveaways on the rich, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) warned, “Thousands and thousands will die.”