Rural Health Care: Keeping Our Hospitals Open
Health care is not theoretical in rural Montana. If you get hurt out working, or heaven forbid you have a heart attack, the nearest hospital can be sixty to ninety minutes away. That is not a policy debate. That is response time.
Our hospitals, clinics and nursing homes are basic infrastructure, just like our bridges and water systems. In Choteau, Conrad and Shelby they are also some of the best-paying jobs in town. Lose your local hospital and you lose emergency care, the chance to have a baby close to home, and a big reason young families come back. You start losing your town.
My job is to protect access to care while insisting on accountability and a budget we can sustain. That includes paying providers enough to keep the doors open. The state skipped the second year of the Medicaid provider rate increase this summer, and I will work to restore it, because our nursing homes cannot absorb that hit.
I supported Medicaid expansion because it keeps rural hospitals and nursing homes open, and in 2025 the Legislature made it permanent. Montana’s version is built the conservative way, with work requirements and fraud protections. Sen. Ed Buttrey and I also wrote in a provision found nowhere else in the country: Hutterite colonies pay the state’s share when their members enroll. More than 150 rural hospitals have closed across the country since 2010, most of them in states without expansion. Montana has not lost one.
A responsible conservative doesn’t stand on the porch and watch the hospital close just to prove a political point.
Training Our Own Doctors and Nurses
Coverage means nothing if there is no one there to see you. Doctors who train in Montana tend to stay in Montana, which is why I have supported doctor residency training here at home. In 2017 the residency directors recognized that work with the Montana Medicine Residency Director’s Award.
Nurses, CNAs, techs and EMTs matter just as much. I have spent time with our colleges on nurse training, like this visit to the Great Falls College simulation lab with Bob Mehlhoff. The STARS Act (HB 252, 2025) now rewards schools when students earn industry credentials, dual credit or apprenticeships. Health care is one of the best places for a rural kid to start, and one of the best reasons to come home.
Neighbors Taking Care of Neighbors
Out here, health care is also the volunteer EMT, the ambulance crew, and the neighbor who drives you to Great Falls for treatment. People up here want money treated as a scarce resource, and they also want somebody to answer the 9-1-1 call. I will keep standing up for both.
And all of us can do our part. Giving blood takes a little time and helps a neighbor you may never meet. Watch for the next blood drive in your town and roll up your sleeve.