President Donald Trump on Friday promoted a $50 billion healthcare program aimed at helping rural communities he accused Democrats of ignoring, part of an effort to show how his administration is addressing rising healthcare costs ahead of this year's midterm elections.
During a White House roundtable with several Cabinet members, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., congressional lawmakers, and members of the healthcare community, Trump said his administration was rebutting "those who were trying to make a case that we weren't taking care of the rural community."
"I'm all about the rural community," Trump said in remarks that aired live on Newsmax and the Newsmax2 free online streaming platform. "We won the rural communities by numbers that nobody's ever won them before, and we're taking care of those great people."
The Pew Research Center reported that Trump won rural voters in 2024 by 40 points, 69%-29%, over Kamala Harris, exceeding his winning margins in 2016 and 2020.
"We increased funding for rural healthcare by an unprecedented record, setting $50 billion over five years, which will benefit Americans in all 50 states," Trump said. "And this was made possible by cutting massive waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicaid and reinvesting those funds to revitalize hospitals and our cherished rural communities and hospitals in rural communities."
The Rural Health Transformation Program was added late in the legislative process as a juicy enticement for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, addressing concerns in the Senate about the impact Medicaid cuts could have on rural communities.
On Dec. 29, the administration announced the amounts distributed to each state in the program's first year. Awards averaged about $200 million per state, with totals ranging from $147 million to $281 million.
"We are getting rural communities the health support they need, and we're getting it immediately," Trump said. "These funds will go to empowering rural hospitals, strengthening their workforce, modernizing facilities and technology, and ensuring that rural Americans get world-class healthcare in their own community, right smack in their own community like they've never had it before, and they've been hurt very badly by the Affordable Care Act."
According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicaid spent $19 billion on rural hospitals in 2024.
The rural health fund will provide an additional $10 billion annually from 2026 through 2030.
The program will not make direct payments to rural hospitals but instead distribute funding to states, which submitted detailed "rural health transformation plans" to CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, who also attended the roundtable.
In a message aimed at midterm voters, Trump blamed Democrats for "hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud" stemming from the Affordable Care Act, which he referred to as the "Unaffordable Care Act," and noted that no Democrats voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
"Every single Democrat in Congress voted against the lifeline for rural communities, and I hope everyone knows this," Trump said. "And this is not about elections, but I hope you remember this in the midterms, because the Democrats are just so horrible toward the rural community.
"Remember that rural hospitals and communities were devastated by soaring costs. And that continues despite colossal increases in government spending. Since Obamacare was passed, only 7% of the annual Medicaid spending on rural hospitals has gone to rural hospitals. Obama didn't care about the rural community.
"To be totally blunt, what he did care about [was] insurance companies. And this was a bill to make insurance companies wealthy. ... As a result, rural healthcare facilities have suffered from low occupancy rates, workforce shortages, and failing programs that put Band-Aids over the problems in those communities. And we're not going to have that. We're taking great care of them."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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