In response to fears from some Republican lawmakers that Medicaid cuts included in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act would lose rural constituent support, Congress created the Rural Health Transformation Program.

Under the program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed to pay states $50 billion over the course of five years (2026 to 2030) to use toward improving their rural healthcare systems.

However, despite a common misconception that the money will go straight to rural hospitals, which notoriously operate on small margins, only a portion of the fund (15%) will go to hospitals for patient care. Instead, a majority of the money is intended to go toward initiatives like bringing health tech into rural facilities.

Keep reading to hopefully clear up some confusion.—MA

It’s been more than two months since OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, and the results are in. They’re…not great.

A Feb. 23 study in Nature Medicine found the patient-facing chatbot didn’t tell users to go to the emergency room (ER) in 52% of cases that clinicians felt required emergency attention.

The study is described by its authors as the first independent evaluation of the patient-facing chatbot search tool since its Jan. 7 launch. A previous study from the UK with a different design found regular (non-health-focused) large language models triaged users incorrectly the majority of the time, too.

For what it’s worth, OpenAI said in a news release ChatGPT Health “isn’t intended for diagnosis or treatment.” But Girish Nadkarni, the study’s senior author and chief AI officer at New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, told Healthcare Brew “the need for these tools is real” amid limited healthcare access. And even though AI isn’t meant to be used this way, it realistically will be, he added.

For more on the study, keep reading.—CC

As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act President Trump signed into law last July 4, state Medicaid budgets are going to be significantly slashed beginning in 2027.

An analysis from research institute Rand Corporation published Feb. 26 estimated that state Medicaid budgets will be reduced by a total of $665 billion between 2025 and 2034.

But not all states will feel the effects equally.

Those that will see the sharpest budget declines, according to Rand, are Medicaid expansion states that use significant state-directed payments (which require managed care organizations to give higher reimbursement rates to Medicaid providers) and provider taxes (which are imposed on hospitals and other Medicaid facilities to help fund the state’s portion of the federal payer’s cost). Such states include Arizona, Iowa, and Nevada, which are set to see an estimated 15% of their budgets cut due to the OBBB, Rand estimated.

Though not every state is expected to see cuts.—MA

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