As rural health care providers in Northeastern Pennsylvania struggle to stay afloat, the Rural Health Transformation Program may be their only lifeline.

SCRANTON, Pa. — A key player in healthcare paid a visit to Lackawanna County.

Dr. Mehmet Oz oversees Medicare and Medicaid services for the Trump administration. His visit to Scranton comes as health officials in our area worry about the potential effects of the so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’.

Dr. Mehmet Oz and Congressman Rob Bresnahan met with local healthcare officials from across our area to discuss the future of rural healthcare in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Congressman Rob Bresnahan brought Dr. Mehmet Oz to a health care roundtable at a Geisinger office building in Scranton.

Dr. Oz heads the Government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Those services will likely see changes as the so-called one big beautiful bill gradually takes effect.

The government has set aside 50 billion dollars to help rural health care providers in our area and around the country navigate those changes.

Dr. Mehmet Oz explains, “The $25 of the $50 billion will be doled out equally to every single state, independent of everything else. The second part of that is designed to specifically, and be tailored to issues of how rural you are, where your population lives, and a bunch of other variables.”

Commissioner Ronald R. Schmalzle (R), Pike County, says, “Unfortunately, we are the picture of rural healthcare that is underserved. It’s our role to work with everybody to change that picture and to be a better picture in the future.”

Dr. Linda Hemack, The Wright Center CEO, says, “There was a humble acknowledgement of a really complex debacle in front of us, which is American Healthcare, and that the solutions for that are going to be when we have proximity between the oversight and authority of the federal government.”

Representative Rob Bresnahan (R), 8th District, says, ” We were able to have meaningful dialogue about what this actually means, and by giving everybody a voice at the table, so we know how to best apply and actually utilize these funds so it actually makes a difference.”

“We didn’t want to just give the money out and hope it works. We purposely put strings attached so if you promise to do certain things and don’t do them, you should be penalized; however, if you do those things and other states don’t do what they promised to do, you’re going to get their money.”

The changes to Medicaid called for in ‘The One Big Beautiful Bill’ are set to take effect in just over a year.

In just about a month, another big health care issue comes to a head: subsidies that support the Affordable Care Act end, and premiums are expected to go up. 

Congressman Bresnahan told us that he supports extending the subsidies while adding new reforms.

It’s not clear right now if any kind of plan will be voted on by the end of the year.