Hello, everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams.

Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Last summer, when negotiations were playing out over the GOP's big tax and spending bill,

you'll know and love it as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,

states and

health care advocates raised alarm over the roughly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid that were in the

legislation. Now, even though that total is over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget

Office, that's still a huge hit. And early data are showing that those cuts are going to hit particularly

hard in rural communities. So in response to that, Congress pulled together a $50 billion pot

of money for rural health care that's going out over the next five years. It's called the

Rural Health Transformation Program, and that made it into the final

version of the bill. And some of that $50 billion in funding is finally starting to roll out.

So to help make us smart about this, we are joined by Ariel Zions. She's a rural health care correspondent

for KFF Health News and based in South Dakota.

Ariel, welcome to the show.

Hi, thank you for having me.

Ariel, first walk us through how the rural health transformation program works.

Sure.

So like you said, it's five years of funding and states submitted their applications for their first year of

funding and that has already been granted. Some received over 100 million, others received a bit over

200 million, and they will be spending some of the funding through the states, like the states will be administering some

programs, whereas others will be put out through grants that hospitals can apply for companies

...