Sen. Josh Hawley has introduced legislation to stop any future cuts to Medicaid hospital funding, just two weeks after voting for nearly $1 trillion in reductions as part of President Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill, Axios has reported.
The Missouri Republican’s Protect Medicaid and Rural Hospitals Act would, if passed, repeal provisions that limit the ability of states to levy taxes on health providers in order to receive more money from the federal government, according to The Hill.
In addition, the legislation also aims to repeal a cap on state-directed payments, which permits states to direct how providers are paid by privately run managed care plans.
Hawley said in a statement that “President Trump has always said we have to protect Medicaid for working people. Now is the time to prevent any future cuts to Medicaid from going into effect,” adding that “I want to see Medicaid reductions stopped and rural hospitals fully funded permanently.”
Hawley’s bill would increase a $50 billion fund that seeks to help rural hospitals by adding an additional $50 billion, and extending it from five years to ten, but experts have said this amount of funding is not nearly enough to make up for the impact of the cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill, The Hill reported.
According to a KFF analysis, federal Medicaid spending in rural areas is estimated to go down by $155 billion over a decade because of the legislation signed by Trump.
Hawley defended his vote for the Big Beautiful Bill, despite his current legislation, stating to reporters that “you can’t get everything you want in one piece of legislation. I like a lot of what we did. I don’t like some of it.”
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