By Lauren Boebert

After touring Melissa Memorial Hospital in Holyoke and Wray Community District Hospital — two of more than a dozen rural hospitals in my district — I was again reminded why I fight for them in Washington. The doctors, nurses and staff on the eastern plains keep care close to home.

In rural Colorado, a hospital is more than a building. It is emergency care, maternity services, good jobs and the backbone of a town. When one is affected negatively, families drive farther, often on poorly managed roads. Local economies suffer. And the most vulnerable pay the highest price.

As November approaches, it’s hard not to be reminded that for the past decade Democrats and socialists have blamed President Donald Trump for everything. Regarding Republicans and rural hospitals, do not believe the well-funded ActBlue Chinese propaganda machine.

In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis and Democrat leaders have spent two years cutting healthcare while running sanctuary policies that make fraud and crime harder to stop. These healthcare cuts are happening because of mismanagement and a lack of focus on citizens here in Colorado.

Since 2025, about $79 million of a $252 million midyear cut package came from Medicaid. Polis halted a planned 1.6% provider-rate increase — taking $38 million from hospitals, rolling back dental rates, cutting family caregiver pay, delaying extra payments to small and rural providers, tightening prior authorization and cutting pediatric behavioral therapy rates.

In 2026, despite the Colorado Rural Health Center warning that even a 2% cut is devastating with the state’s rural hospitals already in the red, the Democrats in Denver passed a budget that cut most Medicaid rates another 2%, taking $95 million from hospitals and scaled back other services, including adult dental caps and family caregiver hours.

So, when Democrats talk about cuts, they happened here in Denver. Those are state choices, not slogans. Sanctuary rules that block cooperation with federal immigration enforcement make it easier for illegal presence. They also benefit fraud, identity theft, cartels and repeat offenders who drain dollars that should go to hospitals, nurses and families who play by the rules.

Republicans are doing the opposite: getting crime and fraud out of government programs, enforcing the law and sending resources back to the people who need them — farmers, ranchers, seniors, children and rural frontier hospitals on the eastern plains. Secure communities and honest books protect care close to home.

Cutting fraud, waste and abuse puts real money into rural care. I worked with my colleagues for years — long before President Trump’s reelection — to plan what became the One Big Beautiful Bill so we would have a plan ready to go. That bill, also known as the Working Families Tax Cuts law, created the Rural Health Transformation Program — $50 billion over five years, $10 billion a year from fiscal year 2026 through 2030. Colorado’s first-year award is about $200.1 million.

This funding of almost $160 million in the first year goes out as competitive grants to rural providers for new or innovative work:

• Expand telehealth and technology — $44 million
• Recruit and keep rural doctors, nurses and staff — $23.4 million
• Support rural hospitals, clinics, EMS and other providers, including hospital mini-grants and EMS coordination — $48.9 million
• Fund new and alternative care models — $40 million
• Improve chronic-disease prevention and rural care — $4.8 million

I have advocated and been in the corner of rural hospitals for years. Just last Congress, I fought for the bipartisan Rural Hospital Technical Assistance Program Act (H.R. 4713) to authorize USDA’s rural-hospital technical-assistance program in statute.

Recently I voted yes on the Improving Care in Rural America Reauthorization Act (H.R. 2493), which passed the House in April 2026. That bill would extend HRSA rural outreach, network and small-provider grants through FY 2030 at about $80 million a year. I’m working with the Senate for it to become law.

I am an original cosponsor of the bipartisan Rural Hospital Revitalization Act of 2026 (H.R. 9005), with Republicans and Democrats in the House and a Senate companion from Sens. Jerry Moran and Michael Bennet. That bill would offer interest-free USDA Community Facilities loans of up to 10 years so rural hospitals can build or renovate and put the savings into care and staff.

I will continue to be a voice for common-sense budgeting, flexibility for telehealth closer to home, fairer Medicare and Medicaid payments and an end to one-size-fits-all rules that ignore rural medicine. Socialism is not the answer, and no Coloradan should have to choose between their health and a long drive to the nearest open hospital.

Lauren Boebert represents Colorado’s 4th Congressional District and serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.