Well, Lisa mentioned those rural hospitals across the country, many already struggling to stay afloat,

that could face devastating consequences if those proposed Medicaid cuts in that domestic spending

bill become law. To help us better understand what's at stake, I spoke earlier with the Director

of Reimbursement for the Citizens Memorial Hospital System in southwestern Missouri, Tim Walters.

Tim Walters, thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you.

So tell us about your hospital system, Citizens Memorial.

How big of an area do you serve, and what's the makeup of your patient population?

So we serve about a seven-county area in southwestern Missouri, around 100,000 population.

And roughly 55% of our patients are Medicare, 15% are Medicaid, and several more that our VA are uninsured. So about 77% of our

patients are either government or uninsured. So that's a very heavy government payer mix. That's why

we're very sensitive to any cuts to that Medicare or Medicaid funding.

So if the proposed Medicaid cuts go through, how serious would the impact be on your hospital system?

What's in the Senate Finance bill would probably cut about $3 million per year of funding for our hospital,

which would be coming right off our bottom line when we tend to operate

right at break-even. So we would have to find a way to make up for those cuts. It's hard to cut

expenses at this point, so curtailing services, trying to figure out a way to make up for

those cuts would be very difficult for us. Do you worry that rural hospitals like yours might have to

shut your doors? It's a possibility. I mean, we're hospitals like yours might have to shut your doors?

It's a possibility.

I mean, we're hoping we'd be able to weather that kind of a cut, but we're not positive.

We would certainly cut some services first before we would, you know, hopefully get to the hospital

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