{"id":518077,"date":"2026-03-12T00:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/518077\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T00:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:42:11","slug":"delegates-announce-plan-to-run-rural-health-bill-governor-says-lets-go-and-then-delegates-do-what-they-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/518077\/","title":{"rendered":"Delegates announce plan to run rural health bill, governor says let’s go, and then delegates do what they said"},"content":{"rendered":"

The House has started moving legislation to authorize spending of the $199 million West Virginia stands to bring down from the federal government to bolster rural healthcare.<\/p>\n

The House Finance Committee on Wednesday morning considered and advanced SB570, <\/a>providing a supplemental appropriation to the Department of Health via fund 8802.<\/p>\n

Moving that bill has been a priority of Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who wants to prepare to unlock the federal dollars.<\/p>\n

The conclusion of the regular legislative session is Saturday.<\/p>\n

The House Finance Committee, on Tuesday morning, publicly placed the bill on its Tuesday agenda.<\/p>\n

Governor Morrisey, shortly after that on Tuesday, hosted a media appearance<\/a> where he expressed frustration<\/a> that the House had not acted sooner.<\/p>\n

\"\"Gov. Patrick Morrisey<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I think it\u2019s outrageous that here we are at the end of session and that something that should have happened in the first week hasn\u2019t occurred yet\u2014terrible on every level,\u201d Morrisey said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The governor added, \u201cWe may very well pay a price for the delay, let me clear, we may pay a price financially for what\u2019s already happened, that\u2019s outrageous and every way and I want everyone in the public to know that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, as it had planned to, the House Finance took up the bill and moved it to the full House of Delegates. It already passed the state Senate on Feb. 13.<\/p>\n

\"\"Vernon Criss<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in the hallway, House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss said the bill moved on a regular schedule and needed time for lawmakers to fulfill their oversight responsibilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the legislative process. He didn\u2019t bring the bill up on the first day. How does he expect us to be able to react until we have all the information in front of us?\u201d said Criss, R-Wood.<\/p>\n

In late December, officials announced that West Virginia has secured $199 million this year from the federal Rural Health Transformation Fund. The award almost doubled the guaranteed minimum for the first year.<\/p>\n

Of the full amount, $25 billion is being evenly divided among the 50 states, and discretionary dollars are being allocated to states based on each state\u2019s application, the state\u2019s rural nature and other policies. Allocation to each state is based on a competitive application process and guided by the quality of state-proposed strategies.<\/p>\n

Nationally,\u00a0disbursements for states<\/a>\u00a0are between $145 million and $281 million for the year.<\/p>\n

This is through The Rural Health Transformation Program, created under the \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act\u201d to distribute $50 billion over five years across all 50\u00a0states to strengthen rural health care.<\/p>\n

The program to support rural health\u00a0grew out of concerns<\/a>\u00a0that changes to Medicaid under the \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act\u201d would undercut already fragile rural health systems.<\/p>\n

Criss said lawmakers have gained information about the fund and how dollars would flow all through the bill\u2019s legislative journey. Without that time, he said, lawmakers would know far less about the state\u2019s plans to responsibly use the $199 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce the bill started coming this way to the House, then we were getting more information about how the money was to be spent,\u201d Criss said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The House has started moving legislation to authorize spending of the $199 million West Virginia stands to bring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-518077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}