Spanberger pledges to address coming shortfalls that could cripple rural healthcare

The Big Ugly Bill ramrodded through Congress by the MAGAs and signed into law on July 4 is a threat to healthcare in Rural Virginia. Abigail Spanberger is pledging to fight back to protect healthcare access for rural residents, most of whom are likely to vote for her opponent in the 2025 Virginia governor race.

Politics in modern-day America is so stupid.

“I believe that we need to put Virginia patients first. That’s why I’m focused on how we can protect access to safety net providers – the people in this room today – who serve our most vulnerable communities and who will now be contending with the most devastating cuts to healthcare in modern American history. As governor, I will leverage every resource at Virginia’s disposal to fight back against these attacks,” Spanberger said at a roundtable discussion on Virginia’s Eastern Shore on Saturday.

The Medicaid cuts in the Big Ugly Bill will knock more than 17 million Americans off the healthcare rolls, and they will also impact operations at hospitals – a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation projects that hospitals in the Commonwealth could end up losing as much as $4 billion a year over the next 10 years.

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ICYMI

• The Medicaid cuts aren’t an other people problem: They impact us all
• The Republicans get their Big Ugly: We get higher taxes and closed hospitals

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A particular area of focus is on rural hospitals, like our local hospital, Augusta Health, that are going to be faced with tough choices that could impact not just the people being thrown off the Medicaid rolls, but the rest of us as well.

Six rural Virginia hospitals made the list of the more than 300 nationwide that face possible closure because of the loss of reimbursements from Medicaid impacting their bottom lines.

Augusta Health isn’t quite there, but because 28 percent of its patients have their healthcare costs covered by Medicaid – well above the national average of Medicaid patients for a hospital, which is 16.7 percent – the pressure is going to be on the money people to figure out how to account for a reduction in Medicaid revenues without having to make cuts to vital services.

The problem here for Augusta Health is, even before the cuts the MAGAs enacted so that they can give rich people a tax break, Medicaid wasn’t exactly paying its bills.

Augusta Health, with annual revenues at $469 million in 2023, according to its IRS filing for that year, reported a $6.7 million shortfall in reimbursements from Medicaid.

On top of that, the hospital reported providing $9.1 million in financial assistance to patients, in essence, free healthcare.

“These reductions will create real challenges for all health systems, including ours,” said Mary N. Mannix, president and CEO of Augusta Health, in a statement last month. “While the impact will be phased in over the next several years, the cumulative effect on access to care and hospital sustainability is serious.”

Our local hospital, thus, is facing serious money issues, entirely because of policies championed by Trump that our local MAGA congressman, Ben Cline, voted in favor of.

Trump got 64.5 percent of the vote in the Augusta County, Staunton, Waynesboro area last year.

Cline got 64.1 percent.

Maybe Spanberger cuts into those margins a bit, but Augusta County is still gonna Augusta County.

And yet, she’s still standing up for us.

To repeat, politics is so stupid these days.