Iowa Voted For Trump. Now His 'Big Beautiful Bill' Is Closing Their Hospitals - The Logical Leftist

Julie Lawrence is 68 years old. She lives in Ottumwa, Iowa. She's not an illegal immigrant. JD Vance promised her she was safe. Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" just closed her hospital — and 445 others are next.

Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" slashed one trillion dollars from Medicaid and ACA funding. The administration promised rural and working-class voters they were protected — that only undocumented immigrants would lose coverage. That promise is now rubble. A new Public Citizen report identifies 446 hospitals at high risk of closing or cutting services, serving 7 million patients, with nearly 200 of those hospitals sitting in Republican congressional districts whose representatives voted for the cuts.

The closures are already happening. MercyOne in Ottumwa, Iowa shut its clinic and began layoffs in Des Moines, as parent company Trinity Health faces a projected $1.5 billion loss. St. Mary's Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia, Georgia closed its labor and delivery unit, citing "recent Congressional cuts to Medicaid." Ammonoosuc Community Health Services in Franconia, New Hampshire closed its rural location — which served 1,600 patients — facing a $500,000 annual hit. These are not projections. These are communities that voted Republican and are now watching their hospitals disappear.

The math makes the extraction scheme impossible to deny. The Big Beautiful Bill created a $50 billion rural health fund — while KFF estimates it will cut $137 billion from rural Medicaid over the next decade. That's an $87 billion net loss for rural America. The CBO projects 7.5 to 10 million more Americans will be uninsured over the next decade. When those patients show up at emergency rooms — and they will — hospitals are required to treat them without reimbursement. The hospitals left standing absorb the burden until they can't. Then they close too.