Illinois will receive $193 million for each of the next five years to expand health care access for the nearly 2 million people in rural areas — or about $101 annually for every rural Illinoisan.
The money comes from the $50 billion federal Rural Healthcare Transformation Program fund, which Congress created to offset federal Medicaid spending cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or H.R. 1, that passed last summer.
But health care organizations said the money will not be enough to compensate for Medicaid cuts.
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services said between 190,000 to 360,000 Medicaid recipients are at risk of losing coverage in Illinois because of new work requirements.
