The fallout from President Donald Trump’s unpopular Big Beautiful Bill keeps hitting impoverished red states harder than others a hospitals and voters come to terms with yawning debt and healthcare cuts threatening critical hospitals.
Mississippi Today reports state lawmakers face a “daunting task” trying to fill the holes Trump blasted into the state budget with his looming federal cuts. Unhappy with their options, the Republican-dominated legislature failed to address some of the most pressing issues with Trump’s cuts during the legislative session, so the looming blast holes are still waiting.
Mississippi is one of many impoverished state with a high percentage of uninsured population who do not reimbursement hospitals for visits. But Mississippi Today reports Medicaid is expected to lose $1 billion over the course of the next decade as a result of “Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill signed into law in July.” To further complicate matters, Republicans let federal enhanced premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act Marketplace insurance expire late last year, making health care much more expensive for “hundreds of thousands of Mississippians.”
The problem is such a big issue that Republican state Rep. Sam Creekmore predicted much of next year’s legislative session will involve patching over Trump’s federal cuts.
“I figure that will be a lot of our time going forward out of session and next year,” Creekmore said.
But Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, said people like Creekmore shouldn’t get their hopes up for a solution.
“As a general matter, states are not going to be able to fill the gaping hole that Congress and President Trump have created here,” Alker told MS Today. “[No] state, no matter how wealthy or well-intentioned, is going to be able to sustain that.”
Sen. Hob Bryan, a Democrat, lamented that state lawmakers were powerless to do anything about problems made at the federal level.
“… I’m absolutely terrified about what is going to happen to people in rural areas. Rural areas have been transformed by the big boys before,” Bryan said.
