The Rural Health ‘Hunger Games’ Are Underway
September 15, 2025 | Source: Politico | by Alice Miranda Ollstein
The Trump administration on Monday kicked off a scramble among the 50 states for a slice of a new $50 billion fund for rural health care, but experts on the ground fear the program’s rushed timeline, lack of guardrails and potential for politicization will leave some hospitals struggling to stay open.
States have just a few weeks to submit detailed applications for the fund, which Congress created late in its negotiations over a bill this summer that made deep cuts to Medicaid and other health programs. Federal health officials will then have a couple months to review them and dispense the money.
On a press call Monday morning, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz made sweeping promises about the impact of the program, which he called a “massive opportunity to make rural America healthy again.”
“We can use this as an opportunity to pivot from the crisis that we are currently living in to the comeback that America expects from us,” Oz told reporters. “If we invest these monies wisely, we won’t just have health care systems barely hanging on in rural America — they’ll start to thrive.”