Trump administration disburses $10 billion in rural healthcare funds

The Trump administration announced Monday that it is going to roll out $10 billion to 50 states in its second installment of the $50 billion rural healthcare fund which was created as part of the administration’s One Big Beautiful Act last year.

“President Trump made a historic investment in rural America, and HHS is putting those resources to work in every state,” said Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr in a press release on Monday.

“This next $10 billion will expand access to care, strengthen the rural health workforce, improve prevention, and help states build solutions that fit the needs of their own communities. We are giving rural America the resources and flexibility to build stronger health systems that deliver better care and better outcomes,” he continued.

With the second year of funding, the administration will left with $30 billion in funds which are expected to be rolled out to states on a yearly basis until 2030. The funds are meant to improve healthcare access, quality and outcomes in rural communities across the nation, according to a fact sheet from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

All participating states receive a baseline funding of $100 million each year which makes up about half of the annual funding of the Rural Health Transformation Program, while the other half is allocated based on factors such as the state’s rural population, initiatives in the state’s rural health transformation plan and policy actions, according to the fact sheet.

“Rural Americans have life expectancies three years shorter than their urban peers, but President Trump’s Rural Health Transformation Program is funding the historic investments necessary to close that gap,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in the release .

“States have already put these resources to work bringing better care closer to home for their rural communities, and CMS looks forward to helping them build on that progress in the coming year,” Oz added.

Some states will receive a higher amount of funds as compared to others in the second installment with Texas and Alaska being at the top of the chart with over $280 million and $270 million in allocated funds, according to the release.

The five-year-funding of $50 billion is less than the estimated cuts of federal Medicaid spending in rural areas which adds up to $137 billion over a course of ten years, according to an analysis by independent health policy research organization KFF .

This announcement comes after the Democrats won a stunning victory in the midterm elections, taking control of both the House and the Senate. Democratic candidates made healthcare affordability a central focus in their campaigns leading up to the election.

Recent polling conducted before the midterms showed over half the respondents backed Democrats’ performance over Republicans in terms of healthcare.