New reporting from Axios Raleigh highlights how Trump and Senate Republicans’ devastating bill could jeopardize health coverage for nearly 700,000 North Carolinians and force rural hospitals across the state to shut their doors – all to give billionaires a tax handout.

Read more about the Senate GOP’s toxic plan below.

Axios Raleigh: Hundreds of thousands in North Carolina at risk of losing health care coverage

Lucille Sherman | July 2, 2025

• Hundreds of thousands of North Carolina’s poorest will lose health care coverage under a proposed federal budget package, the state’s health department said.
• The latest version of the “big, beautiful bill,” as President Trump has called it, slashes food and health benefits for the poorest Americans, while giving tax cuts to higher earners, Axios’ Emily Peck writes.
• Among the states whose rural areas could be hit hardest by the proposed legislation is North Carolina, which expanded Medicaid just two years ago and has one of the largest rural populations in the country.
• The legislation would also trigger a state law that rolls back Medicaid expansion, under which nearly 700,000 North Carolinians have coverage. 
• Experts say the cuts could blow a hole in the nation’s safety net and unleash a tidal wave of pain — overcrowded emergency rooms, an increase in chronic health care issues, more medical debt, and more people going hungry.
• Cuts to Medicaid could lead to nearly 12 million people losing health insurance, per the CBO.

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