LOS ANGELES — At Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, patients on gurneys line the hallways of the emergency department waiting for care, and overflow mental health patients are consigned to outdoor tents.
The 152-bed hospital, which sits on a sprawling medical campus close to the predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood of Watts, is struggling for financial stability. Its patients are poorer and sicker than average, many of them are uninsured, and three-quarters of MLK’s patient care revenue comes from Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the Medicaid program, which pays low rates. For hospitals statewide, by comparison, less than one-third of patient revenue comes from Medi-Cal.
And MLK Community Healthcare, which comprises the hospital and two nearby clinics, is independent, so it cannot fall back on a larger chain to absorb some of the financial pressure.
Similar problems plague hundreds of financially vulnerable hospitals around the country, in rural and urban areas. And their financial woes are about to get worse.
The Republican budget measure known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump last July, is expected to cut federal Medicaid spending by $911 billion over 10 years. And it could contribute to an increase of more than 14 million in the number of uninsured people, many of whom will go to already crowded emergency rooms to get care they can’t pay for.
The law does include a special fund to boost rural healthcare, totaling $50 billion over five years. But that’s far less than the $137 billion it is ex …