MANSFIELD, La. — When Desoto Regional Health System took out $36 million in loans last year to renovate a rural hospital that opened in 1952, officials were banking on its main funding source remaining stable: Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program for low-income people and the disabled.
But those dollars are now in jeopardy, as President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress move to shrink the nearly $900 billion health program that covers more than 1 in 5 Americans.
Desoto CEO Todd Eppler said Medicaid cuts could make it harder for his hospital to repay the loans and for patients to access care.
“I just hope that the people who are making these decisions have thought deeply about it and have some context of the real-world implications,” he said, “because it’s going to affect us as a hospital and going to affect our patients.”
One of the decision-makers is Eppler’s representative in Congress: House Speaker Mike Johnson, who lives about 35 miles north of here. He said he knows the Republican leader and his staff understand hospitals’ plight: The mother of Johnson’s chief of staff is CEO of a rural hospital in the district.
“I’ve never met a congressman yet that wanted a rural hospital in their district to close, and certainly Mike is no exception to that rule,” Eppler said.
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Last year nearly 290,000 people in Johnson’s di …