The House Speaker’s Eyeing Big Cuts to Medicaid. In His Louisiana District, It’s a Lifeline.

MANSFIELD, La. — When Desoto Regional Health System took out $36 million in loans last year to renovate a rural hospital that opened in 1952, officials were banking on its main funding source remaining stable: Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program for low-income people and the disabled.

But those dollars are now in jeopardy, as President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress move to shrink the nearly $900 billion health program that covers more than 1 in 5 Americans.

Desoto CEO Todd Eppler said Medicaid cuts could make it harder for his hospital to repay the loans and for patients to access care.

“I just…