The logical conclusion of the Republican Party’s death drive is beginning to take root, as their desire to cut Medicaid to the bone and lie about it now is spilling over into the real world. Nebraska’s McCook-based Community Hospital said it will shut down its Curtis Medical Center, operating for over 30 years, due entirely to the effects of the Republican Bill that passed a procedural hurdle in the House last night because our area dictator jangled keys at lawmakers, successfully.
“Unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years,” Community Hospital CEO Troy Bruntz said in a statement.
This is what I was writing about yesterday in how Trump’s economic slowdown is here, and how the math in the GOP murder bill is very straightforward in myriad ways. It aims to make Trump’s gestapo more well-funded than the Marines, gives historic handouts to the ultra-rich, all while blowing out the deficit to a degree that has bond yields rising for the third day in a row since it passed the Senate, and the Medicaid cuts are certain to harm the Republican Party’s most enthusiastic rural voters.
Curtis is a small town, as around 900 people reside in it. The natural reaction from Republican reactionaries is likely to be something like ‘who cares, it’s too small to matter.’ For those who only care about people in the aggregate and not on an individual level, this logic could make sense, if you assume that Curtis is an outlier and is not a harbinger of closings to come.
Which it is. There are going to be plenty more casualties like Curtis Medical Center in small towns that will seriously add up. The $25 billion fund the Senate added to the GOP murder bill only makes up for 43 percent of Medicaid cuts affecting rural communities, and does very little to ameliorate the destruction this bill will bring to rural economies. Hospitals are major employers in many rural areas, and not only will this bill strip 12 million people of health care according to the Congressional Budget Office, but it will take down countless jobs with it in predominantly Republican areas, which is at the base of the performative consternation from Senators like Lisa Murkowski and Josh Hawley who voted for a bill they say goes too far in cutting Medicaid.
Curtis resides in Frontier County, which voted for Republican Senator Deb Fischer by a 75 percent to 25 percent margin over Independent Dan Osborn in 2024. Republicans will surely portray Curtis as unique and not emblematic of what they aim to do with their murder bill, but like most things they say, this is a lie in service of a president who doesn’t seem to know that severe Medicaid cuts are in the bill he’s pushing people to pass while telling them not to touch Medicaid. Sen. Thom Tillis conveniently rediscovered his spine the moment he retired, and what happened in Curtis is the exact thing he has been warning his GOP colleagues about. That they are still pushing forward with a bill specifically designed to obliterate rural hospitals just demonstrates how much contempt Republicans have for their own voters.
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