The impacts of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to health care will be devastating. That was the message delivered by one Colorado senator, four Colorado congresspeople, the state’s governor, and some members of the health-care industry during a Zoom press conference Wednesday.
The budget reconciliation bill, which passed the U.S. House by a four-vote margin Wednesday, will cut an estimated $1 trillion from Medicaid spending over the next decade.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, who represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes Montezuma County, voted for the bill.
Medicaid, which provides care for the poor and disabled, is particularly relied on by rural hospitals. A recent report listed Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez as one of six hospitals in the state at risk of closing because of the bill.
The final version of the budget reconciliation bill does include a measure providing $50 billion to rural hospitals nationwide over a period of five years.
In a phone interview, Southwest Health System CEO Joe Theine told KSJD that that funding will certainly be helpful.
However, he noted that the permanent changes to Medicaid will outlast the fund.
“I’m not expecting the cost of health care, or demands on our health-care system, to go down over the next five years,” he said, likening the situation to facing a cliff when the time period ends.
Theine also said a number of questions remain about the fund.
“I don’t know who’s eligible and who’s not. Is there a formula for distributing the funds? Do we have to apply? Is it grant-based? If so, who’s administering it?
“It’s good that it’s in the bill,” he continued, “but I don’t know what it means for us.”
Theine was among the speakers during the Zoom meeting on Wednesday. He did not lambaste the bill, as did many of the other speakers, but expressed some concerns about its impacts.
“Protecting Medicaid is essential,” he said during the meeting.
He spoke about the importance of Southwest Memorial Hospital, which is a 20-bed critical-access hospital, to the local area, saying that some 9,000 community members receive service there.
People traveling through the Four Corners also are treated there, he noted, describing a recent multi-vehicle crash on Highway 145 between Telluride and Dolores.
Multiple patients needed surgery to stabilize their injuries, he said.
“Physicians, nurses, technicians left their evenings with their families and friends” to come to the hospital and treat the patients, Theine said, even though they were not on call that night and the patients were not part of the local community.
Theine said Southwest Memorial Hospital operated at a loss for three consecutive years, then turned a profit in 2024. He said it’s expected that nearly a quarter of the total cash the hospital will collect this year will come from the Medicaid program.
Adam Fox, deputy director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, said during the Zoom meeting that “this unconscionable, big ugly bill will make the biggest cuts to health care that we have seen in history.”
The health initiative advocates for people using Medicaid, which Fox said includes 1 of every 5 Coloradans.
Fox said the bill will raise the cost of premiums for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, throwing the market into chaos.
“This bill is going to force more Coloradans into impossible decisions, like paying for the care that they need or paying for a roof over heads and keeping food on the table,” Fox said.
“More Coloradans will ultimately be killed by the bill. We’re talking about people’s lives.”
During Wednesday’s Zoom meeting, Gov. Jared Polis noted that the bill requires twice-yearly Medicaid eligibility determinations instead of the current yearly check-ins, meaning hundreds of bureaucrats will need to be added to keep up with the increased paperwork.
“This would divert millions of dollars from patients and doctors to pay for government bureaucrats. . . to keep up with all the paperwork,” Polis said. “That money doesn’t come from nowhere.”
Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper also spoke against the bill at the Zoom meeting, calling it cruel and reckless.
“It will strip 17 million Americans, including many, many children, of health care, force many rural hospitals to close, and expand the national debt to a level we have never imagined before,” Hickenlooper said.
The measure, which is projected to add about $3.3 trillion to the national debt, “takes from the poor and gives to the wealthiest [through tax cuts],” Hickenlooper said. “It really is a travesty of any kind of common sense.”
U.S. representatives Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, and Brittany Pettersen also spoke against the budget reconciliation bill at the Zoom meeting, along with Mitzi Moran, the CEO of Sunrise Community Health in Greeley, and Deana Cairo, a disability-rights advocate.
A clearly emotional Pettersen said the bill’s impacts will be “heartbreaking.” She spoke about the people who will no longer have access to care, such as pregnant women who rely on Medicaid to pay the costs of delivery and people such as her mother who work at low-wage jobs.
“People are going to have nowhere to go but the emergency room,” she said.
“You’re firing doctors and nurses to hire bureaucrats to create a system that makes it impossible to qualify for Medicaid,” Pettersen said.
She said it couldn’t be clearer where Republicans’ priorities are – providing tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the United States on the back of working-class people.
Crow said, “This will be the single largest transfer of wealth from the working class and middle class to the top 1 percent in America.”
Referring to the measure taking $1 trillion out of the health-care system, he said, “You can’t take that out and not have hospital closures” and doctors and nurses leaving the system. Crow said that will affect everyone, even people who have “Cadillac insurance programs” through their workplace.
“This bill is the worst bill I’ve ever seen in my many years in Congress,” said DeGette in the Zoom meeting. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that approximately 17 million Americans will lose health coverage, she said.
Some $10 billion in funding will be lost by Colorado hospitals, she said, meaning many rural hospitals in western and northern Colorado will have to close.
“It will hurt the entire community if the hospital goes out of business,” DeGette said.
Cairo, the disability-rights advocate, said Medicaid has helped people with disabilities be able to be cared for at home rather than in institutions, which is costlier as well as worse for the patients.
“The very people who Medicaid was created to serve will be harmed by this bill,” she said.
