Kelly to Health System CEOs: "It's about the math."
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, during a hearing with leaders of some of the nation's top hospital CEOs, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) questioned the executives about ways rural health care can improve while also highlighting the need for more affordable and accessible health care in Rural America.
In December, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that all 50 states will receive awards under the Rural Health Transformation Program, a $50 billion initiative established under President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cuts legislation. This includes more than $193 million for Pennsylvania in fiscal year 2026.
"If you can't exist in a small market, that's not because you don't want to be there. It's because you can't afford to be there. You can't have the people in the lobby looking for help when you don't have a doctor or nurse there to take care of them," said Rep. Kelly. "It's math. You're not in rural areas because you can't afford to be there. The cost of operation is ruining everybody."
"My philosophy is that we have to be two things at once: large enough to bring scale, resources and stability, and local enough to respond to the unique needs of each community we serve. Rural and community hospitals face the same market pressures as their urban and academic counterparts, only with fewer resources. They confront workforce shortages, declining patient volumes, rising labor and supply costs and an increasingly complex regulatory environment, often while operating on extremely thin margins," said Wright Lassiter, III., President and CEO CommonSpirit Health, a Catholic non-profit hospital system, in prepared remarks. "By bringing the resources of a larger system to those communities, we can help smaller hospitals manage expensive technology requirements, difficult payer contracting negotiations, workforce shortages and other pressures while addressing local gaps in care."
BACKGROUND
The Rural Health Transformation Program is a federal investment which aims to help states expand access to care in rural communities, strengthen the rural health workforce, modernize rural facilities and technology, and support innovative models that bring high-quality, dependable care closer to home.
Nearly 40% of the population in Pennsylvania's 16th Congressional District resides in rural areas.