Do you want the bad news, or the bad news?
Rural hospitals and clinical trials are in grave danger
Representative Wittman wants to be a megaphone for good news in the Commonwealth. Unfortunately for him, he rarely plays the role he’d like us to believe.
He brags about VCU Tappahannock Hospital's venture into new clinical trials. Alas, many of these trials will never begin.
Once again, Wittman brags about the creation of the Rural Health Transformation Fund’s influx of $50BN (part of H.R. 1). What he doesn't say is that this represents only 70% of the loss resulting from Medicaid cuts. Federal Medicaid spending on rural hospitals is projected to decrease by $50.4 billion over 10 years. The cuts would especially affect services like inpatient care, obstetrics, behavioral health, and nursing home care.
Currently, at least six rural hospitals in Virginia—including four in Southwest and Southside Virginia, one in Hampton Roads, and one in the Northern Neck—are reported to be at risk of closure due to the Medicaid cuts in H.R. 1. Three rural health clinics in the Shenandoah Valley have already announced their closures as a direct result of the budget law. Expert analysis projects that more rural hospitals in Virginia may follow if the financial losses of $1.655 billion in Medicaid funding are not offset by other means. This represents one of the sharpest impacts among U.S. states, as more than a third of rural hospitals in Virginia were already operating at a loss before the cuts.
The second part of this post represents more ominous news. H.R. 1 and related federal budget actions in 2025 resulted in deep cuts to cancer research funding, with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) budget reduced by 37.2% and the broader NIH budget (which includes most cancer research funding) cut by about 40.4% for the upcoming fiscal year.
These major reductions have already led to a dramatic contraction in the number of new cancer research grants, with grant funding across biomedical science falling by about 43% from previous levels. Researchers and cancer centers are warning of canceled trials, halted research projects, job cuts, and slower progress against cancer due to these funding decisions.
Funding for new and ongoing cancer clinical trials has been especially hard hit, with hundreds of trials terminated or delayed, particularly studies on rare and pediatric cancers. Disproportionate effects are felt by programs supporting minority and low-income populations and researcher-initiated exploratory science.
Wittman loves to brag about programs for which he has no responsibility, then proceeds to gaslight us into believing that funding billionaire tax cuts is more important than maintaining rural hospitals and cancer research. Don't let him get away with it!