Alan Guebert – Making rural America less healthy again
Farm and Food File for the week beginning Sunday, Oct. 12, 2025
Alan Guebert
If Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his boss, President Donald J. Trump, “make America healthy again” I will eat any one of the 15 or so hats that somehow have taken up residence in my small office.
And, yes, that goes for the two most prized ones, a well-worn birds-on-the-bat St. Louis Cardinals hat and a new, green Oliver hat.
In fact, I’ll eat both if both Kennedy, Jr. and the White House make both urban and rural America healthier.
Better yet, I’ll spot both the secretary and the president that neither must actually make America provably healthier; they just can’t make it provably unhealthier than today.
Given their actions to-date, my hats won’t be sliced, sauced, or sautéed anytime soon. One reason comes via the Associated Press in its report on Kennedy’s recent appearance before Congress to explain his MAHA plans:
“U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy made myriad false and misleading claims… as he fielded questions examining his seven-month tenure leading the nation’s health agencies… [He] ignored government data, twisted legislation and pointed to unsubstantiated treatments while addressing… Covid-19 vaccines, rural hospitals and school shootings…”
“Unsubstantiated treatments” and intentional ignorance aren’t what medical professionals prescribe for a healthier America.
A few days later, Kennedy’s long-awaited MAHA report for healthier children drew “mixed reactions from researchers and advocates working in public health, who note that its goals stand at odds with other recent Trump Administration moves,” explained NPR.
At the top of those Trumpian “moves” was “funding cuts to food assistance, Medicaid programs, and scientific research, as well as Secretary Kennedy’s push for changes in vaccine policy, all of which could undermine public health.”
Cuts to food assistance, scheduled to begin Nov. 1, will hit the nation’s poor hard and its rural poor the hardest. According to the Food Research & Action Center, “While 11.1 percent of the U.S. population lives in poverty,” the rate “climbs to 15.3 percent in rural areas.”
Similarly, “(F)ood insecurity affects 12.2 percent of the general population, but 15.4 percent of rural households. One in seven rural households relies on SNAP,” or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
That means a larger percentage of 5.3 million families ticketed to lose an estimated $1,752 per year in SNAP benefits as part of the “big beautiful bill (BBB)” live in rural America. Less food–wherever you live–means worse health, says the Urban Institute, and the loss will fuel “$50 billion in additional health care cost” across the U.S.
But rural health care–especially the government’s critical Medicaid program–faces even steeper budget cuts than SNAP. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the BBB will “cut federal spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits by $1.02 trillion [in the coming decade]… eliminating at least 10.5 million people from the programs…”
One in four rural Americans depend on Medicaid for their health insurance; 36 percent of that already significant–and about-to-grow–group are children.
The Medicaid cuts will also impact America’s estimated 1,800 rural hospitals where 44 percent, according to the not-for-profit KFF Health News, are already operating with “negative margins.”
Congressional Republicans claim a new, $50 billion fund will cover that shortfall. Health care professionals, however, point out that the money covers only one-third of the proposed rural cuts and none of the expected additional costs fueled by cuts to SNAP and vaccine programs.
All of this points to two inescapable conclusions: Rural America is about to become decidedly unhealthier and all my hats will remain untouched and uneaten on their untidy shelf.
© 2025 ag comm
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