'Devastating': Senate GOP move enrages hospital executives

Executives in charge of rural hospitals are horrified by the newest changes in the Senate version of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" on tax cuts, Politico reported on Tuesday.

The House version of the bill already slashed $600 billion from Medicaid, a move that could cause millions of lower-income Americans to lose coverage. But the Senate goes even further, restricting how much states can charge in federally-matched provider taxes.

"Hospital executives weren’t happy last month when the House included a provision in its version of the bill freezing a loophole states have used to boost payments to hospitals serving the low-income patients enrolled in Medicaid. Hospitals have long enjoyed deference from lawmakers — since they both care for and employ their constituents," said the report. "But they were infuriated when Senate Republicans on the Finance Committee released their version of the bill on Monday. Their proposal went even further than the House measure in curtailing the ability of states to impose taxes on providers. States have used those taxes to gain a larger federal Medicaid contribution, which they have then directed back to hospitals with higher reimbursements."

The Senate version of the bill, which lowers the cap on provider taxes from 6 percent to 3.5 percent, has executives fuming, particularly as many areas that stand to lose the most money from the change are rural areas in Republican-controlled states.

A source close to hospital lobbyists said, “No senator wants to be the reason their local hospital shutters its doors, and now is their opportunity to stop that from happening.”

Shantel Krebs, who runs a rural hospital in South Dakota, told reporters, “The further the cuts that are made, the more devastating it is.”

The harsher Medicaid cuts come as Senate Republicans broadly struggle with how to prevent the tax bill from increasing the deficit. Many lawmakers disagree over cuts that could affect their own states, and Democrats could potentially invoke Senate rules to wipe out a $116 billion source of revenue in the bill.