'There Will Be Many More': Citing GOP Medicaid Cuts, Rural Nebraska Clinic Announces Closure

The devastating cuts to Medicaid contained in Republicans' budget bill have not yet gone into effect but are already having negative consequences for American healthcare.

Nebraska Public Media reports Thursday that the Curtis Medical Center, a clinic located in a rural Nebraska community with a population of under 1,000 residents, will soon shut down thanks in part to the expected impact the GOP's cuts to Medicaid will have on its finances.

Troy Bruntz, the president and CEO of Curtis Medical Center owner Community Hospital, said in a news release that the coming Medicaid cuts are tipping many financially challenged health clinics into insolvency.

"The current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years," he explained.

Nebraska Public Media notes that the Curtis clinic is likely just the first domino in the state's rural healthcare system to fall thanks to the Medicaid cuts and it speaks to recent warnings from people like Jed Hansen, executive director for the Nebraska Rural Health Association, about how many other hospitals are in real danger.

"We currently have six hospitals that that we feel are in a critical financial state, three that are in an impending kind of closure or conversion over to the rural emergency hospital model," Hansen said earlier this week during an online forum about the state's crisis. "We would likely see the closures within a year to two years of once [the Medicaid cuts are] fully enacted."

Other experts have sounded similar alarms on the budget bill's impact on rural hospitals. Sharon Parrott, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), wrote earlier this week that Senate Republicans' efforts to create a fund of money earmarked for rural hospitals would prove woefully inadequate to the problems these institutions will face in the coming years.

"Senate Republicans know the bill would hurt rural hospitals—that's why they added a face-saving temporary fund, but it won't rescue rural providers when the funding runs dry and the permanent cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace coverage remain," explained Parrott. "This is particularly true because the revised Senate fund gives the Health and Human Services secretary significant discretion in how the funds would be allocated. Rural providers need people in their communities to have health coverage they can count on. Without that, more rural hospitals will close and more people with and without coverage will be cut off from care they need."

In an analysis released last month, the American Hospital Association (AHA) estimated that 1.8 million individuals in rural communities would lose their Medicaid coverage under the Republican Party's plan while rural hospitals would receive $50.4 billion less in Medicaid funds over the next decade, putting many of them at severe risk of shutting down completely.

"The Medicaid cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would devastate rural hospitals across the country" if the bill became law, warned AHA president and CEO Rick Pollack. "Many rural hospitals would be forced to choose between maintaining services, keeping staff and possibly closing their doors. Patients would be forced to travel hours for basic or emergency care, and communities would suffer."

Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) cited the story about the Nebraska clinic on X Thursday morning and predicted it was just the beginning of bad things to come for rural hospitals.

"Republicans haven't passed their bill yet, but if you live in... Nebraska you can thank them for making you less healthy," he wrote. "There will be many more."

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the GOP budget bill would slash spending on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program by more than $1 trillion over a ten-year-period and would result in more than 10 million Americans losing their health insurance coverage.