I wrote about the $1 billion application earlier; MPR News takes a deeper look…

Minnesota has applied for a share of $50 billion in federal funding for rural health care that was approved by Congress as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The Minnesota Department of Health applied for $1 billion over five years. Its 62-page application lays out detailed plans for the funds, including fellowships aimed at getting more medical students training and working in rural areas, adding more telehealth opportunities and providing more preventative care screenings in local venues, such as schools, pharmacies and tribal clinics.

It is in reaction to losing funds in other places…

The Minnesota Hospital Association estimates that the state could lose $2.4 billion in federal health care funding in the first year alone, fiscal year 2028. The MHA also finds that 140,000 Minnesotans on Medicaid could lose their healthcare coverage while another 60,000 Minnesotans will likely drop their ACA health insurance because of the rising costs.

It sounds like the impact could be harder felt in rural Minnesota…

About 30 percent of Minnesotans live in rural areas of the state, where the health care system has been severely strained in recent years.

There’s a shortage of physicians, nurses and other medical professionals, and the number of rural medical clinics and hospitals closing is on the rise. The MDH wrote in its application for the Rural Health Transformation Program funding that 34 out of Minnesota’s 95 rural hospitals are financially distressed, which means they’ve had four or more years of negative operating margins in the past eight years. Just this year, Mayo Clinic Health System announced it was closing six rural clinics in southeast Minnesota.

According to the application, Minnesota’s rural residents on average must travel 64 minutes for medical-surgical care, whereas people in the state’s urban areas travel just 19 minutes on average for care.