Hospitals in WA provide essential, high-level specialty care to people across the entire Mountain West and Alaska
WA hospitals will lose $662 million in Medicaid revenue every year, 400,000 people in Washington state alone expected to lose health coverage under Republicans’ newly-passed bill
***WATCH FULL VIDEO from press conference; DOWNLOAD HERE***
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S.Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, held a virtual press conference with Dr. Timothy Dellit, CEO of UW Medicine, and Sommer Kleweno-Walley, CEO of Harborview Medical Center, laying out how the massive health care cuts in Republicans’ reconciliation bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will be devastating for hospitals and all Americans’ access to care. A focus of the press conference was how these cuts will affect people in red states including Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming—which, with Washington state, make up the WWAMI region—who rely on Washington state hospital networks for access to high-level specialty care they can’t get in their home states.
Republicans’ reconciliation bill cuts more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the next 10 years. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Republicans’ health care cuts will terminate health insurance for at least 17 million Americans nationwide and will make health care more expensive and harder to access.
“It is important for people to understand, Republicans are making health care more expensive and harder to access for everyone, no matter what kind of insurance you’re on, or where you go for care,” Senator Murray said on the press call today. “When people lose their health insurance, they don’t suddenly stop needing care. They’re still going to show up at hospitals and emergency rooms if they break a leg or suffer a heart attack. The difference is, hospitals will no longer be reimbursed by Medicaid for providing that care. Meaning they’ll be forced to raise costs elsewhere, for example, on patients who still have insurance, including private insurance through their employers or otherwise. And what happens at hospitals in Washington state also affects people in Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho—whose senators all voted for the Big Ugly bill, by the way. Because hospitals in Washington state provide essential, high-level specialty care to people across the entire Mountain West… I am going to keep doing everything I possibly can to protect Americans’ health care and make it less expensive, not more—and make sure people know exactly who to hold accountable for their neighbors losing health care, or their local hospital shutting down.”
“Keeping patients enrolled in Medicaid along with direct Medicaid support to UW Medicine is critical to allow us to serve as the state’s safety net, helping to support the over $688 million in uncompensated care our hospitals provide to the public every year. It also allows us to continue to educate the next generation of healthcare professionals as UW Medicine provides over 68 percent of Washington’s medical education and training. With loss of Medicaid funding, we risk elimination of clinical services, closures of hospitals, and reduced access to care for everyone,” said Dr. Timothy Dellit, CEO of UW Medicine. “This bill has three major impacts for UW Medicine and the communities we serve. First, it removes patients from Medicaid coverage, leaving patients uninsured with limited access to care. Public hospitals like ours will need to provide increased levels of uncompensated care, stressing our ability to stay open and serve the community. Second, it eliminates UW Medicine’s supplemental direct Medicaid funding that was designed to help cover the cost of treating patients with Medicaid and allows us to serve as the safety net for the most vulnerable. And third, it makes pursuing a career in health care more difficult to afford, by reducing student loan and repayment options, essentially eliminating access to medical education for a subset of the population just as we face a shortage of physicians, particularly in our rural and underserved communities.”
“Harborview Medical Center is the region’s leading safety net hospital, serving a large number of Medicaid and uninsured patients who need our care. Cutting Medicaid coverage and funding threatens our ability to deliver essential care to patients across Washington state and the broader region,” said Sommer Kleweno-Walley, CEO of Harborview Medical Center. “These cuts to federal Medicaid funding will impact hundreds of thousands of patients across not only Washington state, but the entire WWAMI region that Harborview and the rest of UW Medicine serve. Our hospitals play a crucial role in the region, offering highly specialized services that aren’t available in other states… Harborview is the only Level 1 Adult and Pediatric Trauma and Burn Center in Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. UW Medical Center, in partnership with the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, provides the most highly specialized cancer care in the region. Because of this, UW Medicine takes care of patients from places like Northern Alaska and eastern Montana. Many of these patients are insured by the Medicaid program. People come from all over the region to receive specialized treatment from UW Medicine for conditions and injuries such as severe trauma with complex spine, pelvic, face, eye and hand injuries; heart, lung and multi-organ transplants; complex adult congenital heart repairs; and the most severe pediatric trauma injuries that occur in that WWAMI region, to name just a few. For these patients Harborview or UW Medical Center are the closest medical centers that can provide this level of complex clinical care that they desperately need. Harborview also provides the most acute emergency behavioral health care in the state and region, with services to patients in severe crisis due to mental health and substance use disorder. At Harborview, the region’s largest safety net care hospital, over 34 percent of our patients are reliant on Medicaid for health coverage and another 5 percent of our patients remain uninsured despite the Medicaid expansion. This means that these Medicaid cuts will have an outsized impact here.”
Washington will be among the states hit hardest by Republicans’ legislation according to an analysis by KFF, which estimates the state will lose an estimated 26 percent of its Medicaid enrollment. Right now in Washington state, nearly 2 million people—roughly 1 in 5—are enrolled in Apple Health, including 800,000 children. Washington state’s 4th and 5th Congressional Districts, represented by Republicans who voted for the reconciliation bill, have the highest percentages of people who rely on Apple Health. About 400,000 Washingtonians are expected to lose health care coverage under the Republican bill, including at least 250,000 who will lose Apple Health coverage and as many as 150,000 who will be newly priced out of the state’s health care exchange, Washington Healthplanfinder. Hospitals in Washington state could lose at least $662 million in Medicaid revenue every year—forcing hospitals to lay off staff, cut services, or close their doors entirely. Overall, Washington state is expected to lose between $31 billion and $51 billion in federal Medicaid dollars over the next decade. Last year, Washington had an uninsured rate of 4.8 percent—the lowest in the country—but the Republican bill is expected to balloon that number into the double digits.
Nationwide, the Republican health care cuts represent a more than $400 billion dollar hit to America’s hospitals—which are the sixth-largest employer in the country. Over 330 hospitals will likely be forced to close or scale back their services—including 14 hospitals in Washington state—which will force more Americans to travel further for maternity care and emergency rooms, and face longer wait times. An estimated 477,000 health workers will lose their jobs as a result of the Republican cuts to Medicaid.
Senator Murray has held constant recent events—including multiple events in Washington state—to sound the alarm on Republicans’ devastating reconciliation bill and encourage constituents to raise their voices and call on their Members of Congress to oppose the legislation. Senator Murray and Democrats forced Republicans to take dozens of tough votes over a nonstop 30-hour “vote-a-rama,” which came after Democrats forced a full reading of every word of Republicans’ 940-page bill. During vote-a-rama, Senator Murray put forward an amendment to strike a provision of the legislation that achieves anti-abortion extremists’ long-sought goal of “defunding” Planned Parenthood; Republicans blocked the amendment. Senator Murray spoke repeatedly on the Senate floor during debate over the bill, laying out in detail the harm the legislation would cause. Senator Murray also spoke out repeatedly on the Senate floor against Republicans’ use of a depictive so-called “current policy baseline” to hide the true cost of their deficit-busting tax cuts for billionaires.
Senator Murray’s full remarks, as delivered, are below and video is HERE:
“Thank you to everyone for joining us today.
“You know, just weeks ago, Republicans jammed through Congress—on Trump’s command—a devastating, rushed, and partisan bill that will force 17 million Americans to lose their health care and force hundreds of hospitals and health care clinics across the country to close their doors.
“President Trump calls it his ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ but the only Big Bill here is the one Americans are going to be stuck paying after they get sick and no longer have health coverage because Republicans ripped it away.
“It is important for people to understand: Republicans are making health care more expensive and harder to access for everyone, no matter what kind of insurance you’re on, or where you go for care. It makes the largest-ever cuts to Medicaid—which we know in Washington state as Apple Health—and which nearly 2 million people, including the majority of kids in 26 of our state’s 39 counties rely on. Most of them are in districts represented by Republicans!
“At least 250,000 people in Washington state will lose Apple Health coverage under this bill. And as many as 150,000 more are going to be priced out of our state’s health care exchange because Republicans outright refused to extend important tax credits that lower the cost of health care for middle-class families and small business owners. And it is very hard to overstate how much this bill attacks our hospitals and the care they provide to everyone.
“So, I’m glad to be joined on this call by folks from Harborview and UW Medicine who will speak more to that.
“Now, under this bill, Washington state is expected to lose between $31 and $51 billion dollars in federal Medicaid funding over the next 10 years. Hospitals in Washington state alone could lose $662 million in Medicaid revenue every year according to a recent analysis—forcing hospitals to lay off staff, cut their services, or even close their doors entirely.
“That means that people will have to travel further for care and wait even longer to get it. In fact, over 330 rural hospitals are expected to be forced to close their doors or scale back services because of the cuts in Republicans’ bill—including 14 hospitals in Washington state.
“And when people lose their health insurance, they don’t suddenly stop needing care. They’re still going to show up at hospitals and emergency rooms if they break a leg or suffer a heart attack. The difference is, hospitals will no longer be reimbursed by Medicaid for providing that care. Meaning they will be forced to raise costs elsewhere, for example, on patients who still have insurance—including private insurance through their employers or otherwise.
“And what happens at hospitals in Washington state also affects people in Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho—whose senators all voted for this Big Ugly Bill, by the way. Because hospitals in Washington state actually provide essential, high-level specialty care to people across the entire Mountain West.
“In fact, Harborview is the only Level 1 Adult and Pediatric Trauma and Burn Center for all of Washington, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska. So, any Western senator who thinks their constituents aren’t going to be affected by what happens in Washington state are sorely mistaken.
“And there’s a reason Republicans refused to hold a single public hearing about this bill before forcing it through the Senate in the dead of night—they want Americans to know as little as possible about what’s actually in it. I mean for goodness sake, they were revising the bill as we were debating it—most Republican Senators didn’t even fully understand what was in it before they voted for it!
“But here’s the thing: the more people know about what’s in it, the less they like it! Nearly two-in-three Americans view this bill unfavorably, and that goes up to nearly four-in-five when they learn it will cut off funding to local hospitals.
“But Republicans forced it into law anyway, over the objections of Democrats and members of their own party, because Trump and Republicans really will stop at nothing to pass tax breaks for billionaires. The bottom line is this bill steals from people who need help the most and gives more to people who need help the least.
“And make no mistake, the harm is already being felt—despite Republicans’ cynical efforts to delay some of the worst provisions from taking effect until after the midterms.
“Hospitals across the country are already bracing for cuts—it’s law. They know these cuts are coming, they have to plan their budgets over years, not month by month. One clinic in Nebraska already announced it will have to shut its doors because of this bill. More will follow.
“Now, before I hand it off to our speakers who can say a lot more about what this awful bill will mean for hospitals in Washington state and care for the entire region, I want to make clear: this bill may be law, but that does not mean we stop fighting. That does not mean that we give up.
“For my part, I am going to keep doing everything I possibly can to protect Americans’ health care and make it less expensive, not more—and make sure people know exactly who to hold accountable for their neighbors losing health care, or their local hospital shutting down.
“Because, at the end of the day, the American people will have their voices heard. And they will show Republicans exactly how they feel about this Big Ugly Betrayal Bill at the ballot box.
“Thank you, and I will now turn it over to Dr. Dellit from UW Medicine.”
###
