WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee, held a press conference today with U.S. Senators Al Franken (D-Minn.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), to discuss the harmful impact TrumpCare will have in rural America where communities have long faced challenges with access to affordable health care insurance and services. The senators were joined by National Association of Rural Health Clinics President John Gill and New Mexico Radiologist Dr. Robert Rosenberg.
The Senators outlined the findings of a report by Joint Economic Committee Democrats on just how much is at stake for rural America. The report, “TrumpCare: Leaving Rural Health Behind,” highlights that TrumpCare could put coverage at risk for the 20 million rural Americans who have a pre-existing condition. The report also details other ways TrumpCare would devastate rural communities, including increasing the number of uninsured, stripping $839 billion from Medicaid, threatens rural hospital closures, and destabilizes individual marketplaces.
Ranking Member Heinrich’s remarks during the press conference as prepared for delivery are below:
Thank you for joining us this morning to talk about the devastating impacts of the disastrous Republican health care bill on America’s rural communities.
When you visit places in New Mexico like Clayton, Raton, and Santa Rosa, as I did last fall during a rural health care listening tour, you see right away the vital role that hospitals and health clinics play in rural communities.
In most cases, these hospitals are the only health care providers for many miles in any direction.
And hospitals are often the major employer in small towns.
As a Medicaid expansion state, New Mexico has seen dramatic gains in coverage for the folks that these health providers serve.
I have heard from many New Mexicans who have told me how access to health care coverage has helped their families and in some cases even saved their lives.
I recently met with patients at the Ben Archer Health Center, a rural health clinic in Hatch, New Mexico, and heard firsthand how important Medicaid coverage has been for families in southern New Mexico.
One of the New Mexicans I met was Anna Marie Crider, a Las Cruces native who worked for the Las Cruces Public Food Service for 22 years.
Anna's husband passed away in 2008, and when she found herself unable to keep working following a minor stroke, she could not afford health coverage on her own.
When she reached out to my office last year, she had bronchitis and walking pneumonia.
My staff helped Anna enroll in Medicaid, and today she is able to access the care she needs.
Stories like Anna's illustrate just how important Medicaid and health coverage in general is to the hardworking people of New Mexico.
The Joint Economic Committee, where I serve as the Ranking Member, is releasing a report today about the devastating impacts of TrumpCare on rural health care in states like New Mexico.
Medicaid expansion and the need-based tax credits for individual health care market plans in the Affordable Care Act have been critical financial lifelines for rural health providers.
Rural health providers face enormous challenges because it is financially difficult to provide care to populations that live in vast spaces and are generally older, poorer, and more prone to chronic diseases than those in urban communities.
Over the last five years, we have seen incredible health coverage gains across New Mexico—especially in rural and tribal communities.
That means that instead of seeing uninsured patients coming to the emergency room with expensive medical emergencies, rural health providers are able to help patients live healthier lives with a preventative medicine approach and access to primary care.
And when medical emergencies do arise, New Mexicans have coverage that helps rural health providers cover their expenses.
If we throw away the coverage gains from the ACA, these rural health providers may very well have to close up shop.
Right now, more than one-third of rural hospitals are already at risk of closure.
But if you look at where the hospitals that have been forced to shut down are, they are almost all in states that didn’t expand Medicaid.
If hospitals shut down, health care delivery in rural New Mexico would be destroyed.
And the economic impact in rural states like New Mexico would be severe.
It is estimated that when a single hospital closes in a rural community, nearly 100 jobs are lost, taking more than 5 million dollars out of the local economy.
We can’t allow Republicans and President Trump to wreak this kind of chaos and deny whole communities in New Mexico accessible health care facilities.
We need to stop this disastrous health care bill in its tracks.
Let’s be clear.
This isn’t so much a health care bill but rather a tax cut for the ultra-rich masquerading as health reform.
It’s time to turn the page on “Repeal and Replace” so we can get to work on actually fixing those things in the current health care system that clearly need work.
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For more information, please contact Latoya Veal at Latoya_Veal@jec.senate.gov or 202-224-0379.
