From the AJC September 18, 2025:

Medicaid cuts ahead prompt Lavonia hospital to shutter childbirth unit

Excerpts:

A hospital in rural Georgia is closing its labor and delivery unit, saying its precarious finances could not weather further funding cuts called for in President Trump’s new tax and spending law.

• Like many rural hospitals in Georgia, officials at St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia said they face challenges recruiting physicians to the area and are contending with an aging population and fewer young women having babies.
• “We are feeling very desperate and destitute,” said Kristy Wynn, who works at the Hart Life Pregnancy Care Center in nearby Hartwell, a city of about 4,500 near the South Carolina border.
• “Our fear is there’s going to be highway deliveries. There’s going to be women on the side of the road having babies and no prenatal care.”

Republicans point out their provision in the bill of $50 billion for investment in rural health care, but who gets the money is still to be determined—and it’s expected to offset only about one-third of the cuts to rural health elsewhere in the bill. The new funding is also temporary and not limited to just hospitals.

“Many struggling hospitals already teetering on the edge have seen the federal cuts as a death knell. A clinic in rural Nebraska, scheduled to shutter Sept. 30, was the first health facility to announce it was closing as a result of the law.”

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