Trump Medicaid Oz defends GOP reforms for rural hospitals

First on Fox: A senior Trump’s White House official seeks to undermine health care The program would benefit rural hospitals, not to hurt them.

The administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, told Fox News Digital that “special interests are pushing misleading discussion points to try to stop the most ambitious health reforms of all time”.

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The director of Medicare and Medicaid Services newly sworn and Medicaid, Dr. Mehmet Oz, speaks during a ceremony at the Oval Blanche office on April 18, 2025, in Washington. (Andrew Harnik)

Oz’s feeling intervenes as the leader of the majority in the Senate John Thune, RS.D., and the Republicans of the Senate sprint to finish their work on the “Big and Beautiful Bill” of President Donald Trump before an auto-July deadline.

Part of the bill of the Senate finance committee aims to keep the GOP’s promise to eliminate waste, fraud and abuses in the widely used health care program by including work requirements and starting illegal immigrants from the roles of services, among other measures.

The adjustments to the tax rate of the Medicaid supplier ruffled feathers on both sides of the aisle. Indeed, the chief of the minority of the Senate Chuck Schumer, Dn.y. and meaning. Ron Wyden, D-ear., And Jeff Merkley, D-ear., Sent a letter to Trump and the main republicans of the Congress last week warning that changes to the tax rate of the Medicaid supplier would harm more than 300 rural hospitals.

Several provisions fail to adopt the rules of the Senate in “ Big and Beautiful Bill ”

The head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., at the American Capitol in Washington on June 3, 2025. (APO photo / J. Scott Applewhite)

And a cohort of Senate Republicans was furious at the change after the bill abandoned last week.

But Oz argued that “only 5%” of Medicaid spending on hospital patients occur in rural communities, and that the Gigantic bill “targets the abuse extremely used by large hospitals with well -connected lobbyists”.

“We are committed to preserving and improving access to care in rural communities with a transformative approach that strengthens advanced technologies, invested in infrastructure and supports labor – rather than supporting a system that mainly benefits richer urban areas,” said OZ.

Schumer’s letter included data from a study recently conducted by Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at his request. He warned that if the bill was adopted as it is, millions of people would be launched from their health coverage, and “rural hospitals will not be paid for the services they are held by law to provide patients”.

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Trump’s “major bill” was sent to the Senate after the Chamber voted to adopt the bill. (AP; Getty; Fox News Digital)

Fox News Digital contacted Schumer, Wyden and Merkley to comment.

However, another report by the Paragon Health Institute aligned by Trump has argued in a similar way to OZ that special interest groups and health care lobbyists “flooded claims” that the changes in Republicans in Medicaid would close rural hospitals.

For example, they argued that a recent report of the Center for American Progress warned that more than 200 rural hospitals would be at risk of closing, but that the results were based on changes to the percentage of federal medical assistance, or the amount of medication paid by the federal government.

The changes to this percentage were thought out by the Republicans of the Congress but were not included in the “Great and Beautiful Bill”.

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However, the modifications made to the tax rate of supplier Medicaid, which were suddenly away from the version of the Chamber’s GOP bill, have angry the Republicans who warned not to revise the health care program which could prevent rural hospitals and American workers from their advantages.

The Senate financing committee went further than freezing the chamber of the tax rate of providers, or the amount that Medicaid state programs pay to health care providers on behalf of the beneficiaries of Medicaid, for the expansion states of the non -affordable care law, and include a provision that reduces the rate of expansion states annually until it reaches 3.5%.

However, senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, works on a possible change in the bill which would create a rescue fund for the supplier who could sit on her and other Republicans concerning the modification of the tax rate of providers.