Given the town’s remote location from other hospitals—Savannah is over an hour distant, while Augusta and Macon are both two-hour drives away—locals view Evans Memorial as extremely valuable.
However, CEO Bill Lee stated on Monday that Evans will have a $3.3 million budget deficit the following year if federal financing projections remain unchanged.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock heard arguments from Lee, his fellow administrators, and even medical professionals including nurses and doctors. As part of a multi-stop tour of the state, the Democrat visited Evans Memorial to highlight the effects that Georgians will experience from President Donald Trump’s federal spending proposal, also known as the “big beautiful bill.”
Medicaid payments for low-income patients and government-subsidized insurance plans established under the Affordable Care Act are the main sources of income for Evans Memorial and almost 70 other hospitals around Georgia.
With the passage of the Republican tax and spending bill in early July, both of those programs will be significantly altered.
It changes how ACA beneficiaries apply for coverage and reduces Medicaid spending by 15%. Furthermore, in the absence of congressional action, special ACA subsidies that were provided during the COVID-19 outbreak and drew hundreds of thousands of additional enrollees are set to expire in December.
According to a KFF Health News analysis, unless Congress makes changes, 1.2 million Georgians will face increased ACA premiums and 93,000 will lose their Medicaid coverage. Medicaid payments account for around $3.4 million of Evans Memorial Hospital’s $20 million in income, and many additional customers have ACA coverage, according to Lee.
Adam Van Brimmer is credited.
Adam Van Brimmer is credited.
Twenty billion dollars in relief monies, notably for rural hospitals, are included in the big, beautiful package. Those funds are applied for and disbursed by state governments rather than healthcare facilities.
Administrators are therefore searching for areas to make cuts as Evans Memorial Hospital prepares its 2026 budget, Lee said. The doctors’ staff and the intensive care unit, which built in 2022 after COVID-19 revealed the shortage of critical care beds nationwide, are the most likely locations. About 20 of the 95 doctors who serve Evans are on-site every day.
According to Lee, “I firmly believe that this is about relevance and survivability, not partisan politics.”
Warnock commended the people in this building on Monday for their daily acts of bravery.
And frequently, they are doing it against overwhelming odds, and regrettably, the newly approved GOP bill has made those odds much worse, Warnock told reporters at a press briefing after the trip. That bill doesn’t seem so lovely when I consider the amount of labor that these people must do in this facility.
Warnock urged Republicans in Congress, including U.S. Representative Buddy Carter of St. Simons Island, to change their minds about health care. Carter’s district encompasses 15 counties, 13 of which are rural, including two that border Evans County, and runs the entire length of the Georgia coast. Carter, a retired pharmacist who backed the GOP bill, stated that the Medicaid reforms address waste, fraud, and abuse and that the tax benefits in the measure improve the affordability and accessibility of health care.
He claimed that whereas Georgia senators had never provided patient care as a pharmacist, I have, and I know how important it is to give Georgians access to high-quality, reasonably priced healthcare.
Adam Van Brimmer is credited.
Adam Van Brimmer is credited.
In recent years, Republicans have acted to support rural hospitals at the state level.The GOP-led General Assembly has approved a number of policies supported by Governor Brian Kemphas, including as tax credits and grant programs, which have stopped the closing of rural hospitals.
However, Lee of Evans Memorial said that federal cuts increased pressure on the state government to fill the void, leaving him and other rural hospital executives unsure of what the future holds.
When asked to identify her top worry in light of the present climate, Kathy Akins, an Evans Memorial nurse with over 30 years of experience, summed up the ambiguity.
“Maintaining my rural hospital is what keeps me up at night,” she remarked.
