New reporting continues to shine a light on the devastating consequences of the GOP’s toxic budget bill that rips health insurance away from hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians and puts at least five rural hospitals across the state at risk of closing.

Read more below on how North Carolina families and rural hospitals will pay the price for Republicans giving billionaires a tax handout.

New York Times: ‘Tears My Heart to Pieces’: North Carolina Braces for Medicaid Cuts

Eduardo Medina | July 6, 2025

• […] the people of Martin County, in rural eastern North Carolina, have been determined to […] reopen their hospital, which had been struggling financially for years.
• But those plans are now in jeopardy, as is Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands of North Carolina residents, after Congress passed President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill. To help pay for tax cuts, the bill slashes federal spending on Medicaid, leaving states that expanded the program under Obamacare in a particularly difficult spot.
• Health experts say that rural America stands to suffer the most if the Medicaid population shrinks; Mr. Trump’s bill will lead to 11.8 million more uninsured Americans by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. In North Carolina, which has one of the largest populations, the effects could be particularly dire.
• In interviews last week, local health officials and chief executives of hospital systems across the state said that expanding Medicaid had helped create a lifeline for rural hospitals, allowing some to bounce back from financial deficits. And several North Carolina residents who became eligible for Medicaid through the expansion said they felt worried about the possibility of once again navigating life without health coverage.
• More concerning to state officials is that the Trump law could trigger the end of Medicaid expansion in North Carolina […]
• Penney Burlingame Deal, the president and chief executive of Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, N.C., said the law “will create a desperate situation for the people who work here, our patients and the entire community.”
• That sense of desperation is acutely felt in Martin County, where roughly 22,000 people, more than a quarter of whom are older than 65, live in a health care desert. Two physicians remain there. The nearest hospital with robust services is 40 minutes away, in Greenville. Some people who cannot afford to drive there take buses on slow routes, residents said.
• Verna Marie Perry, 66, who used to work for the county’s adult and aging services department, said she fields calls on a weekly basis from friends in need of emergency medical attention. Neighbors have called her crying moments after someone close to them died while being transported to the nearest hospital.
• “To think that if they pass that bill, we can’t get our hospital,” Ms. Perry said through tears last week, “oh God, it tears my heart to pieces.”

WUNC: How being uninsured in N.C. can make you sicker 

Bianca Garcia | July 4, 2025

• Two years ago, North Carolina expanded Medicaid. Since then, 670,000 people have signed on to the health insurance program.
• But now, after Congress passed the megabill that President Donald Trump will almost certainly sign in to law, those people, and maybe even more, could see their health insurance coverage declined.
• Ciara Zachary, assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, says that people in the expansion population — those who gained access in 2023, and who earn between 100% to 138% of the federal poverty line — will be the first affected.
• Without it, people will suffer health consequences; some might even lose their lives. Estimates vary, but all are dire: losing Medicaid and ACA coverage might result in anywhere from 650 to 20,000 preventable deaths per year, depending on who or how you count, according to public health professionals at City University of New York, Hunter College, Cambridge Health Alliance, and University of Pennsylvania.
• “I resent the fact that I might be uninsured again or underinsured again,” [Medicaid recipient Darcy Guill] said.

WFMY News 2: Advocates say SNAP, Medicaid cuts in Trump’s tax bill could hit NC families hard

Joseph Leonard | July 3, 2025

• The bill also shifts more Medicaid costs to states, possibly leaving counties to fill the gap.
• Karen Wallace-Meigs, with the Western Carolina Medical Society, said that’s dangerous.
• “If they are not covered or do not have Medicaid, they will wait longer, that means they’ll have worse outcomes, they’ll be sicker when they arrive and often have worse outcomes. I truly fear we will find North Carolinians will die.”
• She also said rural hospitals could shut down, forcing people to travel farther for care.
• “I understand people worry about a great many things, but this is going to happen and people are going to be left behind, neighbors, brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, and if not now, maybe next week or next year and it’s uh it’s difficult to think about.”

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