'This Is A Direct Attack On Rural America': Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear Rips Big Beautiful Bill Medicaid Cuts

During a press conference on Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) spoke about the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00You can hear me now. I wanted to ask you, you were quoted by the Associated Press as saying that

00:07the Trump big, beautiful bill would close 35 hospitals in Kentucky and knock 200,000 off of

00:15their health insurance. This is a two-part question. How do you know that? And can you

00:21cite the source from where you're getting that information? And contained in the bill is $50

00:26billion in rural hospital stabilization. Will that help or have any impact?

00:33So we can send you a number of sources. The Kentucky Hospital Association itself,

00:37which is a pretty conservative group, have calculated all of those numbers. This is a

00:45billion-dollar hit to our healthcare economy in Kentucky, and that's just Kentucky. So even if

00:52every state were to get $1 billion of that rural hospital fund, that'd be less than 10% of the

00:59overall hit our hospitals are taking. The 200,000 connects up with, is both from a group we'll send

01:07to you, but also connects to the Congressional Budget Office, which scores how much savings

01:12they'll be based on how many people lose their coverage. And certainly that can break down

01:18in each of those states. But the way they find those 35 hospitals is how much funding do they get

01:24from Medicaid as opposed to other sources? Now, if you lose 10% of all of your Medicaid funding

01:33and you're 40 to 60% Medicaid and your patients coming in, then you can't afford to keep certain

01:41lines open. And what hospitals are already talking about right now, I talked to one the other day

01:45they were saying they might lose 200 employees, is what lines are they going to keep? Take

01:51delivery, which the margins are really low on. I mean, we could face a situation where if you live

01:58in parts of Kentucky, maybe you have one hospital an hour this way, and otherwise you're driving to

02:03Louisville or Lexington. What this bill threatens is late in your third trimester, you stay in the hotel

02:08hours away from your husband or partner because you don't know when you might give birth,

02:14and are they going to make it there to see the birth of their child. So none of these are

02:20arguments. They are all facts. They are all how the bill was scored. The only way they scored savings

02:26were people losing their health care. But the economic impact, people aren't paying as much

02:31attention to. And virtually every one of these counties of the 35 rural hospitals, they are the

02:38second largest employer behind the public schools. They likely have the largest budget, meaning the most

02:42money flowing into the community. So if you lose 20% of all the employees there, because the number one

02:51cost on health care is personnel, it's the people that are helping you out, then that is that many fewer

02:56people going into the coffee shop, going into the restaurant, or going into the bank. And this is a direct

03:02attack on rural America, on our economy, and on our health care. Most of the tax breaks are going to go to very

03:08wealthy people that live in big cities. And this is leaving rural America behind. And I get that rural

03:14America voted for this president, but he didn't tell them that he was going to pass a bill that was going

03:20to punch him in the face and ultimately make it that much harder to get by.