Rural health clinics are closing after Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ raising the legislation’s political risks

CNN
September 22, 2025, 2:51 PM

(CNN) — Exactly two months after President Donald Trump signed his policy megabill in a July 4 celebration at the White House, a Virginia health care company blamed the law for the closure of three rural clinics serving communities along the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The closures, Augusta Medical Group said in its statement, were part of the company’s “ongoing response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the resulting realities for healthcare delivery.”

Rural health providers that rely on Medicaid funding were already under strain before the bill cut federal health spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Now, Democrats are linking that crisis to Trump and Republicans in elections this year and next.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger recently campaigned in Buena Vista, a 6,600-person town that is losing its clinic, as she tries to improve her party’s standing with rural voters ahead of this fall’s election. Candidates for governor, potentially faced with the job of navigating the cuts, have been among the most vocal about the threats to rural health care, including Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Rob Sand in Iowa, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and former Biden administration Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in New Mexico.

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