A clinic blames its closing on Trump's Medicaid cuts. Patients don't buy it.

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/13/trump-tax-bill-medicaid-rural/

A clinic blames its closing on Trump’s Medicaid cuts. Patients don’t buy it.
A clinic in rural Nebraska has become a political flash point after tying its looming closure to Trump’s law cutting Medicaid.
July 13, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
By Hannah Knowles

CURTIS, Nebraska — The only health clinic here is shutting down, and the hospital CEO has blamed Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s signature legislation. But residents of Curtis — a one-stoplight town in deep-red farm country — aren’t buying that explanation.

“Anyone who’s saying that Medicaid cuts is why they’re closing is a liar,” April Roberts said, as she oversaw lunch at the Curtis Area Senior Center.

The retirees trickling in for fried chicken and soft-serve ice cream will be hit hardest when the clinic closes this fall, Roberts fears. Seniors who sometimes go in multiple times a month to have blood drawn will have to drive 40 miles to the next nearest health center. Sick people, she worries, will put off checkups and get sicker.

Arriving for lunch, retired Navy veteran Jim Christensen said he’d read an op-ed that “tried to blame everything on Trump.”

“Horse feathers,” he said, dismissing the idea.

Curtis has become an early test case of the politics of Trump’s agenda in rural America, where voters vulnerable to Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” law are reluctant to blame the president or congressional Republicans who approved it. Many people in Curtis have directed their frustration at their hospital system instead of their representatives in Washington.

...

[elleng]

1. DAMN!

Not as inherently smart as we thought, eh???

[mdbl]

9. Politically speaking, they haven't shown intelligence in decades.

[JI7]

2. It's a cult

[dutch777]

10. Yes. Something like 78% of that county voted Trump and surely their man could do no wrong. Practice was already....

...marginal and as Medicaid cuts are not immediate their blaming Trump and his cuts is a bit soon and too convenient. But, to those who now have to go an extra 40 miles for routine monitoring and blood tests, the result is the same no matter who they want to blame. And I suspect even with going the 40 miles they only have one system to choose from for their health care. Rural health is only going to get harder and it was already bad in many locations.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. The hospital can see the writing on the wall if the residents can't

Marginal profitability if any will swing to losses with Medicaid cuts.

[Wounded Bear]

6. That's why those rural hospitals and clinics need to be subsidized...

If you go full on profit margin only, they can't survive financially.

[Srkdqltr]

4. Ok than what is the reason?

[newdeal2]

11. Free markets

They’re welcome to open up their own hospital if they feel like they’ll do better.

[gab13by13]

18. Free markets and the invisible hand of the market

disappeared decades ago.

I loved watching Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC. He decided to travel the country exposing crony capitalism, the shareholders who own MSNBC didn't like that.

The day they fired him he was in tears saying his goodbye.

I miss him. Truth tellers get fired, even on MSNBC, Nicolle, Chris, and Lawrence better keep resume's handy. Rachel is just a part timer.

[NoMoreRepugs]

5. Goobers and rational thought don't mix.

[mdbl]

7. Stupid is as stupid thinks

Especially when they let stoopid channels like Fux Nooze brainwash them.

[senseandsensibility]

8. Ah, the old R's in the diner stories

Expect to read/see a lot of those as the corporate media works to build a narrative that the trump voters don't blame trump for medicaid cuts.

[enough]

12. They will notice in a year when the cuts actually kick in

[maxrandb]

13. Hate-Radio carpet bombed these areas for 50 fucking years

Donnie Dipshit and the Retrumplican Party will literally murder their relatives and they will NEVER stop blaming the "radical leftist commie pizza pedophiles".

The only solution will be when these mindless, brainwashed drones die off.

In a way, I support this Retrumplican plan.

[Mr. Ected]

14. So, if not the Medicaid cuts, then it's all those Democrats in charge in Washington and Lincoln that are the culprits

Ever the victims, never the wiser.

Why would the hospital system suddenly abandon them, tell me that.

Q-level mental gymnastics being performed here to blame a nameless yet threatening force for the closure.

[Xavier Breath]

15. Reminds me of the idiots dying of Covid who were screaming with their last breath that they weren't dying of Covid.

[choie]

16. Blind allegiance to Herr Orange Julius.

Cult members.

[dsc]

17. To be fair they had to be in trouble going in

since the cuts have yet to happen. But since Nebraska didn't expand Medicaid that would make sense.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

23. Most of those rural hospitals in red states are barely hanging in.

Also a number in California and New York State.

[dsc]

27. I know

I am frankly amazed that no hospitals in my area were on the list of ones that might close due to the cuts. I live around 20 miles from three different rural hospitals that aren't on the list. I guess the fact they are at least nominally part of a big chain helps. In NC our Medicaid expansion may well go down thanks to the Trump bill which will have to very much hurt our rural hospitals. We do have one thing which helps. We have a lot of tri care patients proportionally.

[msongs]

19. old folks on welfare losing their socialist medical care. well elections have consequences nt

[Demovictory9]

20. He is their orange god

[iemanja]

21. The cuts don't go into effect until 2027

So this is odd.

[Greg_In_SF]

24. I was thinking the same thing

There must be another reason for this.

[Maru Kitteh]

22. They don't "think" anything till OrangeJaysus tells them to think it.

I grew up with people just like that. Proud of the fact that they’ve never been anywhere, never sought higher education, can’t find Connecticut on a map. Freakin’ mouth-breathers who look down on ANYONE who isn’t exactly like they are.

You better be straight and white as a magnolia flower.

[mcar]

25. They will die rather than admit they were wrong

[Johonny]

26. They cant blame themselves for being idiots

So they have to pretend they didn't screw themselves.

This is why their lives will continue to get worse. They support politicians that don't respect them and don't support them and know they're too fucking stupid to admit it.

I'm glad they're getting what they voted for, though.

[Permanut]

28. Sources say that

Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama are responsible. Started that project after completing the Epstein files.