Governor Larry Rhoden has often touted Trump policies as transforming rural health care. A new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Associated Press finds that most rural voters see Trump policies making rural health care worse:
More than half (54%) of rural voters disapprove of President Trump’s handling of health care, and views on the impact of his administration’s policies on areas like health care costs, Medicare, Medicaid, and the availability of health care are largely negative. For example, by more than a 2-to-1 margin, rural voters say the Trump administration’s policies have had a negative rather than a positive impact on their own health care costs (41% vs. 17%). Still, the Republican Party has a narrow advantage over the Democratic Party in rural voters’ trust to handle the cost of health care (33% vs. 28%), though about three in ten Republicans (28%) say they trust neither party on health care costs, rising to six in ten (59%) among independent rural voters. [Alex Montero, Shannon Schumacher, Julian Montalvo III, Ashley Kirzinger, and Liz Hamel, “KFF/AP Rural Voters Survey,” Kaiser Family Foundation, 2026.09.23].
That persistent and apparently mistaken trust in Republicans to fix health care costs may stem from lingering ignorance of Trumpublicans’ cuts to the socialized medicine rural voters value:
The overwhelming majority (92%) of rural voters say Medicaid is important for people in their local community and half have had a personal or family connection to the program at some point in their lives. However, awareness of future cuts to the program included in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is low among rural voters, with most saying they don’t know whether the legislation increases or decreases future federal spending on Medicaid. Despite this, nearly twice as many rural voters say Trump’s health care policies have had a negative rather than a positive impact on Medicaid (44% vs. 24%). While rural Republican voters are more likely to say the impact of Trump’s policies on Medicaid has been positive (40%), a similar share (43%) say they have had no impact [Montero et al., 2026.09.23].
Rural voters are definitely feeling the impact of Trump hackery on the Affordable Care Act:
Most (57%) rural voters who purchase their own health coverage (10% of rural voters overall) say the administration’s health care policies have negatively impacted their health care costs, higher than the share of rural voters with employer sponsored insurance or Medicare. This likely reflects the impact of rising costs for those who purchased coverage through the ACA Marketplaces following the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits last year [Montero et al., 2026.09.23].
Governor Rhoden won’t wake up to the harm his boss and his party are doing to rural health care; let’s hope enough rural voters will wake up to the cause of their suffering and demand more situationally aware management at the ballot box this November.
Is anyone in congress doing anything useful? POTUS is threatening annihilation again of a civilization, and that can’t stand coming from a POTUS.
If his rhetoric isn’t stopped, we’ll have far more than health care or gas prices to worry about.
it’s cost-shifting. It’s been the MO for decades. Health care providers lose a lot of money on Medicaid patients in particular because the reimbursement rates are so low and the patients can’t be billed for the unpaid balances (unlike Medicare patients, who can be billed for what their insurance didn’t pay for.)
The only way to keep the lights on is to charge higher rates to the patients who do pay,
Medicaid expansion took more people off private insurance and put them on Medicaid, which ramped up the cost-shifting.
By the way, the increase in health care costs was caused by the Affordable Care Act. I read enough of it before It was passed, I didn’t wait for Pelosi to pass it before finding out what was in it.
When I got to the part about the Medical Loss Ratio Rebate, I realized it incentivizes both the insurance companies & the providers to increase costs.
The only way the insurance companies can increase their profits is by paying more out in benefits, in turn charging higher premiums, and that only works if the providers charge more for their services, and the providers are quite happy to do that.
Everybody deserves health care. Everyone deserves to live. There are many models in European countries that work. It could work here if people gave a damn and tried.
Politicians should not be the only ones with the best healthcare our tax money can buy. End of story.
Recall former Montana Sen. Max Baucus threw President Barack Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, former Senate Majority Leader and fellow Democrat Tom Daschle, under the bus during a pre-confirmation quarrel in 2009. Daschle was widely expected to push Congress toward a Medicaid-for-all health care plan in the weeks before Big Pharma-backed Baucus soundly rejected single-payer medical insurance and guided the passing of what would become the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
In South Dakota, Monument, Avera and Sanford operate as a triopoly and as virtual monopolies in their own markets. It’s disaster capitalism for oligarchs and religionists masquerading as health care.
Former Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) has known about the monopolistic nature of rural hospitals for decades. And after Amtrak’s Empire Builder derailed near Joplin, Montana many of the injured passengers were unable to find medical care because area hospitals were overwhelmed with unvaccinated Republicans. The Benefis Health System hospital in Great Falls is about 100 miles from Joplin. Today according to WalletHub Montana is the most lucrative state for doctors and South Dakota is ranked 4th.
Annual spending on healthcare costs has increased, but the increase has slowed under the ACA. According to KFF.org, the rate of cost dropped from average increases of 10 to 12 percent a year in the 1970s and 80s to around 4 percent in the 2010s.
Once again, Algebra’s little anecdotes prove to be counterfactual and nobody calls this moron out on it. Lovely