Montana Doesn’t Need Any More Rural Ghost Towns, but That’s What Republicans Voted For
August 19, 2025
Throughout the country, rural hospitals will close and empty cities will reflect the quiet rooms where doctors and nurses rushed to heal.
Ten years ago, when the Montana Legislative Assembly led by the Republicans adopted the expansion of Medicaid, I traveled in almost each of the rural hospitals of our State before our legislative session. I still remember a meeting of the town hall in Choteau, which has only 1,700 inhabitants. The hospital administrator shared that 43% of people walking through the gates of the hospital lacked insurance; The chairman of the county commission told those who attended that if they lost their hospital, they would lose the city.
Quick advance until 2025. There are now even more Republicans in our state legislature, but the re -authorization of Medicaid was adopted this year by biggest margins. The change in cost of unpaid care, where those of us with insurance cover the costs of those who do not, generally in the emergency room, where it is the most expensive – has decreased considerably. Preventive care, including screening for breast and colon cancer and diabetes and treatment of hypertension, continues to solve health problems at the front, rather than when it is already too late.
And while more than 100 rural hospitals have closed their doors over the past decade, not a single closed in Montana.
However, just before July 4, when the Congress was heading towards recess, the Republicans of DC voted to defeat all this hard work. Now they are at home for the summer, facing the very communities whose hospitals and health care voted to endanger.
The Republicans voted to kick the Montanans workers from Medicaid. They voted to threaten the rural hospitals on which our communities count and to make health care more expensive and less accessible.
In short, the Republicans voted to worsen our health care.
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Senator Steve Daines defended his vote on Fox News, saying: “We must take valid men who lay [sic] On the sofas at home and bring them back to work and sheltered from Medicaid. »»
The problem is that these people do not exist in my condition. According to the Montana Healthcare Foundation, 94% of Montana adults on Medicaid are employed, disabled, caregivers or students. The remaining 6 percent of working adults are just under 9,000 people. Even if the 9,000 of these people “went to sofas” – and they are not – the Daines have always voted to remove health insurance at around 31,000 people, more than three times the number of unemployed adults on Medicaid.
And don’t be mistaken, which hurts one of us in Montana that hurts us. If our neighbors lose their health insurance, we could all lose our hospitals
According to an analysis, Medicaid cuts will cost more than $ 2.2 billion at Montana hospitals over the next 10 years, money that they cannot afford to lose.
When rural hospitals close, there are no alternatives for our residents. They must drive further or not get any care at all. In addition to this, the hospital is often the largest employer in a community, and these hospitals offer well -paid jobs, from nurses to doctors to maintenance staff. When hospitals leave, Montanans may have to follow, forcing them to choose between their families nearby and the careers they love. Of course, this will not be limited to Montana – these same scenes will take place in all states across the country.
Will the Republicans pay in the polls to worsen health care? They could certainly – KFF noted that a majority of adults at the national level opposed the bill after having heard that this would reduce the financing of local hospitals. Unsurprisingly, Democrats and the self -employed opposed the bill even before they are told that it would harm hospitals, 85% and 71% respectively of unfavorable opinions. However, Non Maga Republicans also opposed the bill, with 51% with unfavorable opinions, going to 64% unfavorable after hearing that it injured hospitals like those we fought to protect here in Montana. Even Maga’s self-identified voters could not bear damage to local hospitals, from 78% favorable to 55% unfavorable, a devastating indictment of Trump’s most dedicated supporters.
Even republican politicians who allow it to understand how angry their voters will be. They wrote the law to ensure that the worst impacts will only take out after the mid-term elections. They added a fund to support rural hospitals for five years. They added more paperwork and bureaucratic paperwork in Medicaid, but it started in December 2026, a month after the dust settled in mid-term elections. As the old adage says, “you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s always a pig.”
These attacks by the Republicans could help to put states like the Montana to the purple – or even to the solid blue – but the Democrats must start their messages now, and they must continue. Democrats must ensure that each voter knows why their hospital can close. Each voter must know why their sister, his brother, aunt or their cousin had to move through the state to continue working as a practitioner. Each voter must know why his neighbor has rejected his health care until it is too late.
Throughout the country, voters should know why: it was not a question of being prudent of your hard -won taxes – if it was, they would not have added 3 double dollars to federal debt. The Republicans voted against our health care, and they did so that they could give a little more money to the richest of us.
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I hope that the next time I visit Choteau, the hospital is still there. I remember how its inhabitants reacted to the president of the county commission warning – if we lose the hospital, we lose the city.
Montana no longer needs rural ghost cities, but that is why the Republicans voted. Throughout the country, rural hospitals will close and empty cities will reflect the quiet rooms where doctors and nurses rushed to heal.
At this time of crisis, we need a unified and progressive opposition to Donald Trump.
We are starting to see a form in the streets and in the ballot boxes across the country: from the campaign of the candidate for the town hall of New York, Zohran Mamdani, affordable, to communities protecting their neighbors from ice, to senators opposed to arms expeditions to Israel.
The Democratic Party has an urgent choice to make: will he embrace a policy that is based on principles and popular, or will it continue to insist on losing elections with the elites and the outside contact consultants that brought us here?
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