'Taking away their lifeline': Trump’s spending bill is shutting down rural health clinics

Two months after President Donald Trump celebrated the signing of his spending bill, a Virginia healthcare company blamed the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" for the shuttering of three rural health clinics, CNN reports.

The closures of the Blue Ridge Mountain-area clinics were due to the “ongoing response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the resulting realities for healthcare delivery," according to a statement released by the Augusta Medical Group.

Rural healthcare providers relying on Medicaid funding, CNN says, were already squeezed, but once the bill was passed, they were suffocated as federal health spending is expected to be cut by $900 billion over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats are seizing on the opportunity to link Trump to this crisis.

“Rural hospitals are closing, at the end of the day. We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg here in Virginia, and it’s a sign of what’s to come,” said Marshall Cohen, a veteran Democratic strategist at the political firm KMM Strategies, tells CNN.

Republican Ken Nunnenkamp, executive director of the Virginia GOP, sees it differently, saying in a statement, "If two health clinics consolidate in order to provide better, more consistent, and more accessible service to the patients from both locations, that is a win for rural communities."

Despite the fact that Republicans, CNN says, "created a $50 billion fund for rural health providers, inviting “all 50 states to apply for funding to address each state’s specific rural health challenges," Tim Layton, an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of Virginia says it's no win for anyone.

"You can expect those places to be impacted by now having people who don’t even have Medicaid,” Layton tells CNN. "With fewer people to spread fixed costs across, it becomes harder and harder to stay open," adding that the rural health care fund proposed by the GOP is merely a “short-term patch,” and that “$50 billion will go pretty quick.”

According to a letter by Democratic senators opposed to the spending bill, University of North Carolina researchers highlighted 338 rural health facilities nationwide endangered by the policy changes.

Candace Crow, a mother whose children rely on the services of one of the shuttered Virginia clinics tells CNN, "Every minute counts when it comes to emergencies. This could cost someone their life, so you’re taking away their lifeline.”