{"id":430306,"date":"2025-12-07T05:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T05:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/430306\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T05:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T05:05:08","slug":"100k-alabamians-could-lose-health-insurance-overnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/430306\/","title":{"rendered":"100K Alabamians could lose health insurance overnight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wilcox, Ala. (WSFA<\/a>) – Alabama hospital leaders and Congresswoman Terri Sewell, D-AL07, are warning that a new federal healthcare bill could push many rural hospitals, including one in Wilcox county, into deeper financial trouble.<\/p>\n

Inside a packed community meeting in Camden, residents talked about whether they\u2019ll still be able to afford healthcare in just a few weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne employee used to pay $188 a month, but if he reenrolled in the same plan come Jan. 1, he\u2019ll have to pay $1,500,\u201d explained Rep. Sewell, who says he\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n

With the \u201cBig Beautiful Bill\u201d passed by President Trump and Republicans, Alabama was frozen in place financially. No new Medicaid help. No expanded support. And if federal subsidies expire on Dec. 31, nearly 100,000 Alabamians could lose health insurance overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get cut, except we got cut out of opportunities to do better,\u201d said Dane Howard with the Alabama Hospital Association. \u201cWe are stuck at status quo, and status quo is not good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard says losing that many insured patients so quickly would hit hospitals hard, especially in rural counties where many facilities are already on the edge. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s $650 million worth of care that\u2019s provided that we\u2019re not paid for,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll continue to do that because that\u2019s what we do. That\u2019s what we\u2019re required to do, but it is our mission, as well. So add to that another hundred thousand individuals to the already high uninsured rate in the state of Alabama, and logically, you\u2019ll see that that puts even more strain on an already financially strained system.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Wilcox county, home to one of the state\u2019s most financially-vulnerable hospitals, Sewell says this isn\u2019t just policy. It\u2019s life or death.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are gonna have to make hard choices as to whether they keep their health insurance. And so one of the things we talked about in today\u2019s townhall meeting was how the qualified health centers will be affected, how J. Paul Jones Hospital, right here in Wilcox, will be affected by that, and how healthcare providers, generally, will be affected by it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sewell and hospital leaders say the only way to prevent a deeper crisis is for Congress to extend those subsidies now. They\u2019re urging Alabamians to call their lawmakers before hospitals, families, and entire communities feel the impact.<\/p>\n

Not reading this story on the WSFA News App? Get news alerts FASTER and FREE in the Apple App Store<\/a> and the Google Play Store<\/a>! <\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 WSFA. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilcox, Ala. (WSFA) – Alabama hospital leaders and Congresswoman Terri Sewell, D-AL07, are warning that a new federal…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":430307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[12955,199958,18007,115,199959,210,1141,3168,1142,177963,3170,3235,144672,158039,277,18649,67,132,68,53737,199957,53736],"class_list":{"0":"post-430306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-alabama","9":"tag-alabama-hospital-association","10":"tag-big-beautiful-bill","11":"tag-crisis","12":"tag-dane-howard","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-health-care","15":"tag-health-insurance","16":"tag-healthcare","17":"tag-healthcare-crisis","18":"tag-medicaid","19":"tag-medicare","20":"tag-rural-hospitals","21":"tag-terri-sewell","22":"tag-trump","23":"tag-uninsured","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-wfsa","28":"tag-wilcox-county","29":"tag-wsfa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}