Taking on Goliath: Brain surgeon's clash with UnitedHealthcare shows insurer's hardball tactics
U.S. news
A massive hack of the insurance giant set off a chain of events that has left some doctors' practices on financial life support.
June 20, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT
By Gretchen Morgenson
Dr. Catherine Mazzola, a pediatric neurosurgeon, runs a practice in New Jersey that treats low-income children on Medicaid. Since 2008, she has cared for boys and girls with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and other neurological disorders.
But now, her practice is in serious jeopardy, she says, because of recent moves by the insurance and health care giant UnitedHealth Group.
The story begins in February 2024, when a unit of UnitedHealth experienced a massive hack. The unit, Change Healthcare, shuttered its systems and halted all reimbursements owed to hospitals and doctors like Mazzola.
To help providers stay afloat, Optum, another UnitedHealth subsidiary that includes a bank, began offering " temporary," no-interest loans. Mazzola's practice was among those tapping into the program — it received $535,000, documents show.
The practice began repaying the loans, but in January Optum demanded that it repay the money in full and within five business days.
'Our practice is doing the BEST we can,' Mazzola wrote in an email to Optum on Jan. 20. 'Please ask the loan collection people to STOP. We are already in repayment at the maximum possible amount monthly.'
The situation soon got worse. In mid-February, she stopped receiving reimbursements from UnitedHealthcare. By April, her practice was out $78,000, her accountant's records show, and was struggling to make payroll.
Mazzola dug into the UnitedHealthcare claims and was shocked to find the insurer had drawn up reimbursement checks payable to her practice and then deposited those checks into its own bank account, records shared with NBC News show.
'They are trying to bankrupt our practice,' Mazzola said. 'Now, we're going to do brain surgery and instead of paying us, they're going to take the money themselves.'
Bryan Fisher, a spokesman for UnitedHealth Group, the conglomerate that owns the insurer, declined to comment on its actions related to Mazzola's practice, New Jersey Pediatric Neuroscience Institute.
Her case sheds light on something few patients know about: the behind-the-scenes battles doctors say they must wage with insurers over reimbursements and the increasingly aggressive tactics taken by huge payers like UnitedHealthcare.
Her experience also gives credence, antitrust experts say, to concerns that UnitedHealth Group's acquisitions of an array of health care operations in recent years have given it too much power over patients and the doctors treating them.
'You've got physicians looking out for hundreds and thousands of families, and you've got this big corporate entity exerting as much financial power as it can, just because it can,' said Josh Bengal, staff counsel at the Medical Society of New Jersey. 'It's upsetting.'
'$0 in your bank account'
The hack in February 2024 affected 190 million patients, making it the largest ever involving medical data. UnitedHealth Group ultimately paid a $22 million ransom to the cybercriminals.
After the pause in reimbursements, many providers took out loans through Optum — over $9 billion was borrowed, according to company filings.
Repayment terms on the loans were vague, with Mazzola's contract noting only that her practice would have to repay the loan within 30 business days of receiving notice from UnitedHealth Group.
But Mazzola and other doctors said they were assured by the congressional testimony of Andrew Witty, UnitedHealth Group's former chief executive, who said in May 2024 that the company would seek repayment only when borrowers' businesses were back to normal.
Even though Change Healthcare said it restarted claims processing about a month after the breach, doctors who spoke with NBC News said their operations continued to struggle long after, with some saying they are out millions as a result. Others were forced to close after being crippled by the loss of income.
When Optum began demanding repayment of loans in January, it gave borrowers five business days, according to letters reviewed by NBC News. Those who didn't meet the demands could have their UnitedHealthcare reimbursements withheld as repayment, the letters say.
Mazzola's practice had promised to submit $10,000 a month until her $535,000 loan was repaid. It was all she could afford, she told Optum in emails reviewed by NBC News.
Mazzola said an Optum executive told her by phone that her repayments weren't enough. And in mid-February, UnitedHealthcare began intercepting reimbursements owed to Mazzola's practice 'to repay amounts owed under your agreement with Change Healthcare Operations LLC,' documents show.
Upon further investigation, Mazzola learned the puzzling way UnitedHealthcare diverted the money — drawing up checks payable to Mazzola's practice and then depositing them into a UnitedHealthcare bank account, the documents show.
'How can United Healthcare claw back money that we are due for surgeries and office visits?' Mazzola wrote to an Optum executive she had been dealing with.
She received no response, but in April the company stopped seizing reimbursements from her practice after she complained to the American Medical Association.
It waded into the fight on April 11, when Dr. James Madara, the AMA's chief executive, wrote to Roger Connor, the chief executive of Optum Insight, asking that the company stop its payment demands.
'Physician practices are still suffering severe financial distress as a result of the cyberattack nearly 14 months after the breach was first discovered,' Madara wrote. 'We want Optum to honor its commitment to wait to recover repayment for any loans until the physician determines that it is the appropriate time, because the physicians have relied on Optum's statements.'
In a statement, Optum said it is working with providers 'to identify flexible repayment plans based on the individual circumstances of providers and their practices.'
'We have also worked with UnitedHealthcare to ensure the claims it receives are reviewed in light of the challenges providers experienced, including waiving timely filing requirements for the plans under its control,' it added.
Multiple lawyers interviewed by NBC News reviewed the loan agreement Mazzola's practice signed and characterized it as a contract of adhesion — in which one party calls the shots and the other has little choice but to agree. The financial ruin Mazzola and other doctors faced because of the hack, an event caused by inadequate security at Change Healthcare, made the loans even more one-sided, some lawyers said. As a result, doctors may have legal recourse after the aggressive actions UnitedHealth Group took to extract loan repayments.
The central question surrounding UnitedHealth Group's reimbursement actions is 'whether they abused their use of this remedy by insisting on repayment before it was appropriate for them to do so given the damages that they caused,' Daniel Schwarcz, a professor at the University of Minnesota law school, said in an email.
Amid its clashes with doctors, UnitedHealth Group announced earnings of $9 billion from operations in the first quarter of 2025, a 15% jump from the same period last year. Revenue for the three months was $110 billion.
Even after Change Healthcare restarted claims processing, doctors who spoke with NBC News said they were never reimbursed for many claims because the disruption meant they couldn't submit them within insurers' required time periods. The doctors also said their costs increased after the hack because they had to pay staff members to chase reimbursements.
Mazzola, who estimates that her practice lost $1 million because of the hack, has asked Optum to reimburse her for costs her practice incurred as a result of the breach. But the terms Optum offered would have barred her from being able to sue it because of the hack. So she declined to accept it.
'I really believed that Optum, who was orchestrating these loans, would give physicians and physician groups a reasonable amount of time to repay the loans with the understanding that this financial crisis almost bankrupted us,' Mazzola said. 'I mean literally, you're talking about $0 in your bank account, and you have 70 employees to pay.'
Delays of patient care Doctors say they weren't the only ones hurt by the hack. Patients, too, were harmed when providers didn't have the reimbursement revenue needed to buy medicine, for example.
'There were a lot of delays of patient care as a result of it,' said Dr. Pruvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist in New York City who is medical director of a practice with six locations in New York and 15 in New Jersey.
Parikh's group borrowed $400,000 from Optum to survive the hack. By the end of 2024, it had repaid all but $102,000 of it, documents show.
On Jan. 7, Optum threatened to withhold reimbursements to Parikh's practice if the rest of the loan wasn't repaid in days, an email shows.
'Coming up with that amount of money in five business days is not possible for the majority of private practices,' Parikh said in an interview. 'Not only did they not give us time to get back on our feet, they were like, 'Pay it now.''
While the practice met Optum's demand, she estimated it is out $2 million because of the hack.
In a statement, Change Healthcare said it started clawing back funding it had provided 'more than one year post the event and with services restored.' The company said it is reaching out to those 'that have not been responsive to previous calls or email requests for more information.'
The main reason doctors like Parikh and Mazzola are in this crucible, antitrust experts and physicians say, is that UnitedHealth Group operates so many cogs in the nation's health care machinery. By acquiring an array of health care operations in recent years—including physician practices and pharmacy benefits management, technology, claims processing and financial services — UnitedHealth Group can exert market muscle over weaker participants like doctors and patients.
Federal antitrust lawyers concerned about possible monopolistic activities have sued health care companies in recent years. In 2022, two years before the Change Healthcare hack, the Justice Department and the states of New York and Minnesota sued to stop UnitedHealth Group's acquisition of the claims processor, saying it would reduce competition in health care insurance markets.
Because Change Healthcare dominates the claims clearinghouse business, the government argued, its purchase by UnitedHealth Group would give the conglomerate information about how rivals' insurance plans work, a competitive advantage.
UnitedHealth disagreed, saying it had strong 'firewalls' between units that would prevent sensitive data from being shared throughout the company. Optum, the subsidiary that now houses Change Healthcare, would protect external customers' data from being shared with UnitedHealthcare or its affiliates if the deal went through, the company said.
That argument seemed to persuade the federal judge hearing the case in Washington, D.C., a Trump appointee. In his October 2022 decision greenlighting the $13 billion Change acquisition, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols cited the company's data-sharing firewalls as weighing 'strongly against the government's position.'
Now, doctors say UnitedHealthcare's diverting reimbursements to repay Optum loans shows the kind of data-sharing the government was concerned about.
Hayden Rooke-Ley is senior fellow for health care at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to curb monopolies. He said UnitedHealth Group's seizure of doctors' reimbursements is an example of what happens when a company coordinates among its different subsidiaries for its own purposes.
'These are the sorts of conflicts of interest we worry about when an insurance company also owns the payment pipes and a bank,' Rooke-Ley said in an interview.
Asked to respond to the criticism, Fisher of UnitedHealth Group declined.
When it added Change Healthcare to its operations in late 2022, Optum said the combined companies would 'benefit the entire health system, resulting in lower costs and a better experience for all stakeholders.'
Parikh, the New York City allergist and immunologist, begs to differ.
'It was a complete disaster, and to this day it's not corrected,' she said of the hack. 'But there hasn't been any accountability to this goliath Optum.'
Gretchen Morgenson
Gretchen Morgenson is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. A former stockbroker, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her "trenchant and incisive" reporting on Wall Street.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
13 hours ago
- NBC News
Taking on Goliath: Brain surgeon's clash with UnitedHealthcare shows insurer's hardball tactics
U.S. news A massive hack of the insurance giant set off a chain of events that has left some doctors' practices on financial life support. June 20, 2025, 6:00 AM EDT By Gretchen Morgenson Dr. Catherine Mazzola, a pediatric neurosurgeon, runs a practice in New Jersey that treats low-income children on Medicaid. Since 2008, she has cared for boys and girls with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and other neurological disorders. But now, her practice is in serious jeopardy, she says, because of recent moves by the insurance and health care giant UnitedHealth Group. The story begins in February 2024, when a unit of UnitedHealth experienced a massive hack. The unit, Change Healthcare, shuttered its systems and halted all reimbursements owed to hospitals and doctors like Mazzola. To help providers stay afloat, Optum, another UnitedHealth subsidiary that includes a bank, began offering " temporary," no-interest loans. Mazzola's practice was among those tapping into the program — it received $535,000, documents show. The practice began repaying the loans, but in January Optum demanded that it repay the money in full and within five business days. 'Our practice is doing the BEST we can,' Mazzola wrote in an email to Optum on Jan. 20. 'Please ask the loan collection people to STOP. We are already in repayment at the maximum possible amount monthly.' The situation soon got worse. In mid-February, she stopped receiving reimbursements from UnitedHealthcare. By April, her practice was out $78,000, her accountant's records show, and was struggling to make payroll. Mazzola dug into the UnitedHealthcare claims and was shocked to find the insurer had drawn up reimbursement checks payable to her practice and then deposited those checks into its own bank account, records shared with NBC News show. 'They are trying to bankrupt our practice,' Mazzola said. 'Now, we're going to do brain surgery and instead of paying us, they're going to take the money themselves.' Bryan Fisher, a spokesman for UnitedHealth Group, the conglomerate that owns the insurer, declined to comment on its actions related to Mazzola's practice, New Jersey Pediatric Neuroscience Institute. Her case sheds light on something few patients know about: the behind-the-scenes battles doctors say they must wage with insurers over reimbursements and the increasingly aggressive tactics taken by huge payers like UnitedHealthcare. Her experience also gives credence, antitrust experts say, to concerns that UnitedHealth Group's acquisitions of an array of health care operations in recent years have given it too much power over patients and the doctors treating them. 'You've got physicians looking out for hundreds and thousands of families, and you've got this big corporate entity exerting as much financial power as it can, just because it can,' said Josh Bengal, staff counsel at the Medical Society of New Jersey. 'It's upsetting.' '$0 in your bank account' The hack in February 2024 affected 190 million patients, making it the largest ever involving medical data. UnitedHealth Group ultimately paid a $22 million ransom to the cybercriminals. After the pause in reimbursements, many providers took out loans through Optum — over $9 billion was borrowed, according to company filings. Repayment terms on the loans were vague, with Mazzola's contract noting only that her practice would have to repay the loan within 30 business days of receiving notice from UnitedHealth Group. But Mazzola and other doctors said they were assured by the congressional testimony of Andrew Witty, UnitedHealth Group's former chief executive, who said in May 2024 that the company would seek repayment only when borrowers' businesses were back to normal. Even though Change Healthcare said it restarted claims processing about a month after the breach, doctors who spoke with NBC News said their operations continued to struggle long after, with some saying they are out millions as a result. Others were forced to close after being crippled by the loss of income. When Optum began demanding repayment of loans in January, it gave borrowers five business days, according to letters reviewed by NBC News. Those who didn't meet the demands could have their UnitedHealthcare reimbursements withheld as repayment, the letters say. Mazzola's practice had promised to submit $10,000 a month until her $535,000 loan was repaid. It was all she could afford, she told Optum in emails reviewed by NBC News. Mazzola said an Optum executive told her by phone that her repayments weren't enough. And in mid-February, UnitedHealthcare began intercepting reimbursements owed to Mazzola's practice 'to repay amounts owed under your agreement with Change Healthcare Operations LLC,' documents show. Upon further investigation, Mazzola learned the puzzling way UnitedHealthcare diverted the money — drawing up checks payable to Mazzola's practice and then depositing them into a UnitedHealthcare bank account, the documents show. 'How can United Healthcare claw back money that we are due for surgeries and office visits?' Mazzola wrote to an Optum executive she had been dealing with. She received no response, but in April the company stopped seizing reimbursements from her practice after she complained to the American Medical Association. It waded into the fight on April 11, when Dr. James Madara, the AMA's chief executive, wrote to Roger Connor, the chief executive of Optum Insight, asking that the company stop its payment demands. 'Physician practices are still suffering severe financial distress as a result of the cyberattack nearly 14 months after the breach was first discovered,' Madara wrote. 'We want Optum to honor its commitment to wait to recover repayment for any loans until the physician determines that it is the appropriate time, because the physicians have relied on Optum's statements.' In a statement, Optum said it is working with providers 'to identify flexible repayment plans based on the individual circumstances of providers and their practices.' 'We have also worked with UnitedHealthcare to ensure the claims it receives are reviewed in light of the challenges providers experienced, including waiving timely filing requirements for the plans under its control,' it added. Multiple lawyers interviewed by NBC News reviewed the loan agreement Mazzola's practice signed and characterized it as a contract of adhesion — in which one party calls the shots and the other has little choice but to agree. The financial ruin Mazzola and other doctors faced because of the hack, an event caused by inadequate security at Change Healthcare, made the loans even more one-sided, some lawyers said. As a result, doctors may have legal recourse after the aggressive actions UnitedHealth Group took to extract loan repayments. The central question surrounding UnitedHealth Group's reimbursement actions is 'whether they abused their use of this remedy by insisting on repayment before it was appropriate for them to do so given the damages that they caused,' Daniel Schwarcz, a professor at the University of Minnesota law school, said in an email. Amid its clashes with doctors, UnitedHealth Group announced earnings of $9 billion from operations in the first quarter of 2025, a 15% jump from the same period last year. Revenue for the three months was $110 billion. Even after Change Healthcare restarted claims processing, doctors who spoke with NBC News said they were never reimbursed for many claims because the disruption meant they couldn't submit them within insurers' required time periods. The doctors also said their costs increased after the hack because they had to pay staff members to chase reimbursements. Mazzola, who estimates that her practice lost $1 million because of the hack, has asked Optum to reimburse her for costs her practice incurred as a result of the breach. But the terms Optum offered would have barred her from being able to sue it because of the hack. So she declined to accept it. 'I really believed that Optum, who was orchestrating these loans, would give physicians and physician groups a reasonable amount of time to repay the loans with the understanding that this financial crisis almost bankrupted us,' Mazzola said. 'I mean literally, you're talking about $0 in your bank account, and you have 70 employees to pay.' Delays of patient care Doctors say they weren't the only ones hurt by the hack. Patients, too, were harmed when providers didn't have the reimbursement revenue needed to buy medicine, for example. 'There were a lot of delays of patient care as a result of it,' said Dr. Pruvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist in New York City who is medical director of a practice with six locations in New York and 15 in New Jersey. Parikh's group borrowed $400,000 from Optum to survive the hack. By the end of 2024, it had repaid all but $102,000 of it, documents show. On Jan. 7, Optum threatened to withhold reimbursements to Parikh's practice if the rest of the loan wasn't repaid in days, an email shows. 'Coming up with that amount of money in five business days is not possible for the majority of private practices,' Parikh said in an interview. 'Not only did they not give us time to get back on our feet, they were like, 'Pay it now.'' While the practice met Optum's demand, she estimated it is out $2 million because of the hack. In a statement, Change Healthcare said it started clawing back funding it had provided 'more than one year post the event and with services restored.' The company said it is reaching out to those 'that have not been responsive to previous calls or email requests for more information.' The main reason doctors like Parikh and Mazzola are in this crucible, antitrust experts and physicians say, is that UnitedHealth Group operates so many cogs in the nation's health care machinery. By acquiring an array of health care operations in recent years—including physician practices and pharmacy benefits management, technology, claims processing and financial services — UnitedHealth Group can exert market muscle over weaker participants like doctors and patients. Federal antitrust lawyers concerned about possible monopolistic activities have sued health care companies in recent years. In 2022, two years before the Change Healthcare hack, the Justice Department and the states of New York and Minnesota sued to stop UnitedHealth Group's acquisition of the claims processor, saying it would reduce competition in health care insurance markets. Because Change Healthcare dominates the claims clearinghouse business, the government argued, its purchase by UnitedHealth Group would give the conglomerate information about how rivals' insurance plans work, a competitive advantage. UnitedHealth disagreed, saying it had strong 'firewalls' between units that would prevent sensitive data from being shared throughout the company. Optum, the subsidiary that now houses Change Healthcare, would protect external customers' data from being shared with UnitedHealthcare or its affiliates if the deal went through, the company said. That argument seemed to persuade the federal judge hearing the case in Washington, D.C., a Trump appointee. In his October 2022 decision greenlighting the $13 billion Change acquisition, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols cited the company's data-sharing firewalls as weighing 'strongly against the government's position.' Now, doctors say UnitedHealthcare's diverting reimbursements to repay Optum loans shows the kind of data-sharing the government was concerned about. Hayden Rooke-Ley is senior fellow for health care at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to curb monopolies. He said UnitedHealth Group's seizure of doctors' reimbursements is an example of what happens when a company coordinates among its different subsidiaries for its own purposes. 'These are the sorts of conflicts of interest we worry about when an insurance company also owns the payment pipes and a bank,' Rooke-Ley said in an interview. Asked to respond to the criticism, Fisher of UnitedHealth Group declined. When it added Change Healthcare to its operations in late 2022, Optum said the combined companies would 'benefit the entire health system, resulting in lower costs and a better experience for all stakeholders.' Parikh, the New York City allergist and immunologist, begs to differ. 'It was a complete disaster, and to this day it's not corrected,' she said of the hack. 'But there hasn't been any accountability to this goliath Optum.' Gretchen Morgenson Gretchen Morgenson is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. A former stockbroker, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her "trenchant and incisive" reporting on Wall Street.
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
‘Perfect storm of factors' to increase health insurance premiums
Health insurance companies have started informing states about significant premium increases for individual and small group market enrollees in 2026. A key factor driving these price hikes is the expected impact of tariffs, which are projected to raise the cost of prescription drugs, medical devices, and other medical products. Some insurers, including Independent Health Benefits Corporation and UnitedHealthcare of Oregon, have explicitly cited tariff uncertainty as a reason for a portion of their planned premium increases. Experts indicate that insurers are struggling to project the financial impact of tariffs due to a lack of historical data, leading some to factor in higher costs as a precaution. This situation is part of a "perfect storm of factors", including potential congressional cuts to Medicaid and the expected end of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
NBC News
3 days ago
- NBC News
What is the provider tax? How the Senate's proposed Medicaid cuts could deepen the rural hospital crisis
Rural hospitals across the U.S. — many already hanging by a thread — could take a serious hit if a proposed Medicaid cut in the Senate's domestic spending bill is signed into law. The provision, outlined in the 549-page bill released by the Senate Finance Committee on Monday, would gradually limit states' use of Medicaid's so-called provider tax. Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal government and states. States cover the upfront cost of care and then are reimbursed by the federal government for at least 50%. The provider tax is a state-imposed fee on hospitals and other health providers to help fund the state's share of the Medicaid program. The tax must apply to all providers within a class — so if a state wants to tax hospitals, it must include all licensed hospitals. Most states have multiple provider taxes, including for nursing facilities and ambulance services, said Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy who primarily focuses on Medicaid. All states, except for Alaska, have at least one provider tax, Park said. A good chunk of the money raised goes toward supporting rural hospitals, which often serve a higher share of low-income and Medicaid patients. 'It's a key financing source for rural hospitals, which tend to have much thinner operating margins,' Park said. In recent years, he added, rural hospitals have 'had a rash of closures, staff cuts and service cuts' due to financial hardship. A report from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform, a think tank, found that one-third of all rural hospitals are at risk of closing. The Senate proposal would gradually reduce the provider's tax rate of 6% or less to 3.5% by 2031, according to Monday's outline. States that haven't expanded Medicaid, such as Florida and Texas, would get to keep their rates at their current levels. Taxes on nursing homes and intermediate care facilities, which provide services for people with disabilities, are exempt from the new limit. Dr. Adam Gaffney, a critical care physician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said the Senate's proposal is more aggressive than the House's version, which proposes freezing the provider tax rate at its current level and barring states from implementing new taxes. Gaffney published a study on Monday that found the Medicaid cuts proposed in the House bill could cause an estimated 7.6 million Americans to lose health insurance, leading to thousands of preventable deaths. Under the Senate's proposal, Gaffney said rural hospitals will likely be forced to reduce the services they offer, cut staff or close altogether. Many more patients would also likely die, he added, because they no longer have a hospital nearby. A report from the Pew Research Center found rural Americans live an average of 10.5 miles or 17 minutes from the nearest hospital — about twice as far and five to seven minutes longer than people in suburban and urban areas. 'There's no way around it. It's just basic math,' Gaffney said. 'It means more harm, and that more people will die from lack of care.' Gaffney said Republicans should be taking steps to keep hospitals in rural areas, where many of their voters live, open. 'At the end of the day, hospitals that are in places where patients are poor tend to be poor and to be more at risk of closure,' he said. Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of the Lincoln Community Hospital, a 25-bed rural hospital in Hugo, Colorado, said his business is unlikely to survive under the proposed changes. Stansbury said his hospital serves an area roughly the size of Connecticut, but only has about two providers per square mile. About 25% of his patients are on Medicaid. The hospital receives about $300,000 a month in provider tax reimbursements, which he said are 'essential for us to keep our doors open' and is still only enough to break even. Without the 6% provider tax rate, he will likely have to start cutting services for patients, including long-term care, he said. 'If I start crying, forgive me,' Stansbury said. 'It just breaks my heart.' The proposed cuts in the Senate bill are not final, and may not end up in the version that reaches President Donald Trump's desk. If the Senate's provider tax changes do make it through to the final bill, they are likely to be deeply unpopular among the public, said Robin Rudowitz, director of the program on Medicaid and the uninsured at KFF, a nonprofit group that focuses on health policy. Polling shows that about 3 in 4 rural residents say funding for Medicaid should increase or stay the same, Rudowitz said. About three-quarters of people living in rural areas, she added, say that Medicaid is very important to people in their communities. 'Changes that would restrict or retrench coverage gains could have negative implications for these hospitals,' she said. Rural hospitals groups are already pushing back on the proposed limits on the provider tax. In an emailed statement, Bruce Siegel, the president and CEO of America's Essential Hospitals, a nonprofit group that advocates for hospitals serving poor communities, said the Senate's changes 'would devastate health care access for millions of Americans and hollow out the vital role essential hospitals play in their communities.' In a release Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, slammed the proposed cuts. 'Senate Republicans would pay for those new corporate tax breaks by making even deeper cuts to Medicaid, slashing funding for rural hospitals and other essential health care providers and throwing cash-strapped states off a funding cliff,' Wyden said.
