'Big Beautiful Bill' means a Code Blue for Tennessee health care
Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been hit by $250 million in federal budget cuts. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
The U.S. House of Representatives passed their 'Big Beautiful Bill' by a vote of 215-214. Every member of the Tennessee Congressional delegation voted yes, with the exception of 9th District U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat. And with that vote, they put thousands of Tennesseans at risk of losing their healthcare and their food benefits.
Cuts to TennCare, our state's Medicaid program, will hurt vulnerable Tennesseans — people with disabilities, low income pregnant women, the elderly and children — who depend on this program for access to primary care, preventative care, prenatal and postpartum care and skilled nursing care.
We also face historic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, right as school lets out for the summer — a time when many kids go hungry. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 57,000 Tennesseans with children stand to lose their SNAP benefits. This means children will get up and go to bed hungry all over our state.
Healthcare workers in Tennessee have been sounding the alarm bells on a number of issues for years now: COVID public health measures and vaccine outreach, threats to reproductive healthcare, and, more recently, the NIH funding cuts and the resulting loss of grant money for medical research.
Here in Middle Tennessee, one of our biggest employers, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), has announced $250 million in federal budget cuts and has already begun layoffs as a result of the funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). VUMC received $468 million in 2024 for medical research, the second most in the country according to Axios. Overall, Tennessee universities received $770 million in funding for research from the NIH last year alone.
250k Tennesseans could lose TennCare, private insurance under Congressional spending bill
Statewide, the cuts have also affected the University of Tennessee Health System, Meharry Medical College and St Jude Children's Research Hospital.
Meharry Medical College is an historically Black college (HBCU) in Nashville and it helps to fill the gap of underrepresented minorities in the healthcare workforce. In Memphis, St. Jude's is the hospital where parents can get treatment for their children with cancer and other diseases without fear of medically bankrupting their families. We have only just begun to feel the pain from the loss of the critical NIH funding source for these essential organizations. Eventually, medical research will slow, and breakthrough science, like the work that was done at Vanderbilt to develop the COVID vaccine, will be threatened.
Now, it's time for health care workers and advocates to answer the call for healthcare again. We need to press that Code Blue button in Tennessee, gathering our colleagues together to fight the impending federal budget cuts that threaten Medicaid and SNAP.
Inside the hospital, activating a Code Blue means there is a medical emergency and a patient in need of resuscitation. Here in Tennessee, our healthcare system is in dire straits.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 250,000 Tennesseans will lose their healthcare coverage as a result of Medicaid cuts and other changes to the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace. This is on top of the already over 635,000 Tennesseans lacking any healthcare coverage in 2023, about 11% of the population in our state. Because of our high uninsured rate, Tennessee has had more rural hospital closures per capita than anywhere else in the country, which has led to maternity care deserts and factors into our dismal maternal mortality rates.
This 'Big Beautiful Bill' will have far-reaching consequences for all Tennesseans, not just those who rely on TennCare and SNAP. Hospitals, especially rural ones, run on slim margins and will be at increased risk of closure due to the Medicaid cuts.
According to Becker's Hospital review, over 41% of rural hospitals in Tennessee are vulnerable. Rural hospitals in our state closing will inevitably lead to further crowding in the tertiary care hospitals in our big cities. Wait times in emergency departments will go up for everyone. Appointments to see primary care and specialists will be harder to get.
It couldn't be any clearer: when one person is denied healthcare access, it affects us all.
There is a Code Blue in Tennessee. Our patients, neighbors, hospitals and communities need our help. We cannot let heartless politicians pull the plug and flatline our safety net just to give tax cuts to billionaires. It's time to gather all hands on deck to save our healthcare system that is teetering on the brink before it's too far gone to resuscitate.
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