Texas will be receiving the biggest slice of the federal government\u2019s first rollout of a $50 billion fund created to fortify rural health care across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Trump administration announced how it plans to allot billions of dollars to states over the course of five years from its federal Rural Health Transformation Program \u2014 the fund Congress created earlier this year after approving the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That legislation, in tandem with creation of the fund, slashed Medicaid funding<\/a> by an estimated $1 trillion.<\/p>\n States made bids to receive portions of the one-time federal funding and Texas, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services<\/a>, is slated to receive more than $281.3 million for the first year of the program in 2026. That\u2019s around $81 million more<\/a> than what the state asked for in its application.<\/p>\n Alaska is getting the second biggest portion of $272.7 million a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Texas is receiving the most funds, its rank lags compared to its population. Half of the federal dollars will be distributed equally to each state. Texas, which has the most rural residents of any state, will receive about $60 per resident in a rural county \u2014 the lowest rate in the nation.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than 60 million Americans living in rural areas have the right to equal access to quality care,\u201d U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a news release. \u201cThis historic investment puts local hospitals, clinics, and health workers in control of their communities\u2019 healthcare.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The funds come as budget shortfalls and rising costs have forced Texas\u2019 rural hospitals and clinics into a significant health care crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n The need for health care in rural communities is also higher because they tend to have higher uninsured rates; 76 counties in Texas have uninsured rates over 20%, and 60 of those counties are in rural areas, according to a report<\/a> from the National Institute of Health.\u00a0<\/p>\n The NIH also found that \u201cdeaths from cancer, heart disease, respiratory disease, and unintentional injury are higher in rural Texas than Texas overall,\u201d and that \u201cindicators of health outcomes are worsening in rural Texas populations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRural Texans across the state will benefit from this historic federal investment,\u201d Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> said in a press release. \u201cWe will strengthen our rural hospitals, expand access to critical mental and physical health care, and help reduce chronic disease through wellness and nutrition initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n The state\u2019s health care agency said it will use the funds to strengthen rural health care clinics in a variety of ways, including: creating wellness and nutrition programs to rural providers; educating and attracting health care professionals to work in rural areas; and modernizing resources and technology in rural centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n More specifically, it plans to \u201cadd more than a thousand rural health care\u201d positions with the additional funds.\u00a0<\/p>\n For some Texas hospitals, the funding may be a lifeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n Erin Clevenger, CEO of Memorial Medical Center in Port Lavaca, southeast of Victoria, said in October to KERA<\/a> that her hospital was on the brink of closing. \u201cEvery day is a battle to make sure we don\u2019t become one of those statistics,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Fourteen rural hospitals in Texas closed in the last decade, according to a report<\/a> from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, and over half of the remaining hospitals \u2014 82 facilities \u2014 were at risk of closing. And 21 hospitals were at \u201cimmediate risk of closing.\u201d<\/p>\n Rural hospitals have been pushed to cut their costliest services: labor and delivery services. Almost 60% of rural Texas hospitals don\u2019t deliver babies<\/a>, leaving large swaths of the state without a nearby place to give birth.\u00a0<\/p>\n Between 2010 and 2022, Texas lost a dozen rural obstetrics units, according to the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center<\/a>, and one-fifth of those that remain are at risk of closing<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dan Keemahill contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas will be receiving the biggest slice of the federal government\u2019s first rollout of a $50 billion fund…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[392,17347,1562,287,17400,5476,1564,27,29,293,28,6748],"class_list":["post-104234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-greg-abbott","tag-health-and-human-services-commission","tag-health-care","tag-politics","tag-robert-kennedy-jr","tag-rural-health","tag-state-government","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-news","tag-well-b-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}