Kimberly Adams

Arielle, welcome to the show.

Arielle, first walk us through how the Rural Health Transformation Program works.

What determined how much money states were going to get, whether it be $100 million this year or $200 million or something in between?

That's really interesting, this aligning with the Make America Healthy Again movement, because there are some health care advocates that have raised concerns about some of these rules around the program and this political alignment.

I mean, what kind of things are in that part of the criteria?

I mentioned at the top that, you know, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act included something close to a trillion dollars in cuts, according to the CBO.

With those cuts in mind, how much of a difference can this rural health transformation funding really make?

Right.

You mentioned earlier that some of the money in this rural transformation program is going to grants and that, you know, imagine different groups are putting in, you know, requests for some of those grants.

What kind of projects look like they're going to make it through?

All right, we are going to take a quick break.

We'll be right back.

All right.

We are back with Arielle Zients of KFF Health News.

I want to get more into those Medicaid spending cuts that were passed last year.

I know that most of them aren't really supposed to kick in until after the midterms.

But at the same time, a lot of these health care systems across the country know that these are coming.

How are you seeing rural hospitals preparing for this?

And you also recently reported about a hospital in South Dakota that closed its labor and delivery unit.

You know, it strikes me, and I feel like I've read a bunch of stories about this, that you're often hearing about labor and delivery units closing in rural areas.