The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy is expecting some major fallout from the Trump Administration's “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
National cuts to Medicaid are expected to reach around a trillion dollars over the next decade. Kentucky's share of that is likely to be over $38 billion.
Dustin Pugel is the policy director for the Center for Economic Policy. He said the loss of healthcare coverage in Kentucky will be massive.
“Those cuts would be felt across the commonwealth. An estimated 210,000 Kentuckians would lose health coverage and become uninsured through cuts to Medicaid. In addition to that, 47,000 Kentuckians would lose coverage from Kynect and become uninsured due to the failure to extend the enhanced subsidies there.”
He said the healthcare loss would be substantial, as would the economic impact on places like eastern Kentucky.
“In places like Hal Rogers' 5th District, nearly 1 in 7 dollars worth of goods and services produced and sold originate with Medicaid payments to providers located there. Cuts of this magnitude would ripple throughout eastern Kentucky, leading to layoffs, closures, and even more economic hardship than they've experienced over the last century.”
Pugel said many of those layoffs and closures would happen at rural hospitals. Kentucky has 35 hospitals at risk of closure due to the Medicaid cuts. That is more than any other state in the country.
