BANGOR, Maine — Last year, Republicans set American health care on a new path: They slashed $1 trillion from expected Medicaid funding over the next decade and allowed tens of billions of dollars in annual insurance subsidies to expire.
The full impacts of those changes won’t be felt for years, but many parts of the health care system are already racing to prepare. The scramble is most intense where the cuts are projected to land the hardest: rural states. In dozens of interviews from Louisiana to Maine to Washington, D.C., providers laid out the changes, and difficult choices, they’re making.
