Protect Rural Hospitals
After Montana expanded Medicaid access in 2016, the uninsured rate for adults nearly halved. Now, Medicaid provides insurance to 22% of Montanans and 26.4% of Valley County residents.
But even though our state legislature voted to maintain Medicaid expansion in the 2025 legislature — severely fracturing the MT Republican Party in the process — our representatives at the federal level supported President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which attacked Medicaid.
Therefore, we need to be ready to keep fighting for Medicaid expansion in the next legislative session.
One fight that will need to be won is allocating funds in the budget for sixty new employees to enforce the new Big Beautiful Bill’s mandated work requirements for Medicaid recipients. While most Montanans agree that Medicaid recipients who can work, should, studies show that they already do. In order to enforce work requirements, the state will need to hire 60 new employees. The added expense of hiring those workers will have to be approved in the legislature. If it does not pass, we lose Medicaid expansion.
Here is a full overview of the ways Trump’s BBB will affect Medicaid recipients.
Without Medicaid expansion, Glasgow’s Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital probably wouldn’t close, but it would almost certainly have to pare down the services it can offer. Among the first to be cut would be obstetrics — infant delivery.
If elected, I will do whatever it takes to maintain Medicaid expansion protect our rural healthcare system.
I will support policies that strengthen rural healthcare and look for opportunities to expand healthcare access even further.
