Rural health fund money to be rolled out in 2026

The Trump administration announced that all 50 states will receive award money from the $50 billion rural health fund that was passed in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

The money will be doled out in 2026 with states receiving awards from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services averaging $200 million, with the highest amount being $281 million and the lowest at $145 million.

“This is a massive effort to change the unfortunate reality that has overtaken rural health care in America, which is that your ZIP code has started to predict your life expectancy,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the CMS, told reporters Monday.

Half of the $50 billion is to be distributed equally to every state over the next five years.

“The purpose of this $50 billion investment in rural health care is not to pay off the bills,” he said. “The purpose of this $50 billion investment is to allow us to rightsize the system and to deal with the fundamental hindrances of improvement in rural health care.”

The states set to receive the highest amount in fiscal year 2026 are Texas, which will receive over $281 million and Alaska, which is set to receive more than $272 million. The lowest is roughly $147 million to New Jersey.

Critics say the fund won’t do much to help offset the cuts in funding to Medicare and Medicaid in the law passed last summer.

KFF, a health policy research organization, estimates that roughly $137 billion of the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will impact rural areas.

Dr. Oz said the rest of the award amounts were determined through an intense review over the last six weeks using three criteria: 50% based on rural-ness, 20% based on state policy actions and 30% based on initiatives taken by states.

“These are the areas that have gotten a lot of attention because this could be clawed back,” he said. “If the state says they’re going to do these things as part of their policy and they don’t do that, then we do have the ability to claw back the financial commitment that would have accompanied those state policy actions.”

Dr. Oz said there will be project officers from CMS that are dedicated to each state to help them implement the goals in their applications. States will also be required to submit progress reports on the goals they wanted to achieve.

“More than 60 million Americans living in rural areas have the right to equal access to quality care,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “This historic investment puts local hospitals, clinics, and health workers in control of their communities’ healthcare. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, rural Americans will now have affordable healthcare close to home, free from bureaucratic obstacles.”