HONOLULU (KHON2) — As Congress votes on President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, Hawaiʻi Governor Josh Green is raising the alarm on how proposed trillion-dollar cuts to healthcare programs would impact Hawaiʻi’s healthcare system, particularly in rural areas.
“We have 406,000 people on Medicaid,” Green said. “This is central to our health care system and keeping it intact. The bill is terrible. Right now, just so everyone understands, it’s over a trillion dollars of cuts to the healthcare system and the healthcare safety net. That means every state’s gonna see about 10% of their Medicaid population fall off the rolls. Why would anyone do that to pay for super, super huge tax breaks for the very wealthy? It’s completely misguided. Two-thirds of Americans are against this bill. It will hurt us.”
Some Republicans in the Senate, like Missouri’s Josh Hawley, have been pushing back at cuts to Medicaid, but reportedly are now on board with passing the bill.
According to the Associated Press, nationally, 80 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts.
Green, who worked as a physician in rural Kau on Hawaiʻi Island, argues that cuts will affect many people who live in rural areas even if they aren’t on Medicaid.
“The biggest problem is when you take away Medicaid dollars, the rural health care system begins to crumble,” he said. “So it’s not just the people who are on Medicaid that live in rural areas, like hospitals I worked in when I first came to Hawaiʻi. It’s also all of their neighbors because the hospitals end up closing, the clinics end up closing, and the doctors or nurses have to move to urban centers so people don’t have access to health care. One out of five people are on Medicaid nationally. One out of two children in many states are on Medicaid.”
Republicans hope that cuts can be dampened with the newly included $25 billion Rural Hospital Transformation Program. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives will increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion.
President Trump wants the legislation passed by July 4th. If the bill passes, Green says he has contingency plans for Hawaiʻi.
“We’re gonna make it through. We’re gonna negotiate the contracts with the military. That’s gonna bring resources here. I’m gonna, you know, protect our health care safety net. The legislature was smart and gave me some leeway and some cushion for the budget. So I can manage these things, but it is deeply, deeply cynical and ugly that they’re passing this bill when the Americans don’t even want it,”