Rick Allen Healthcare Lies Georgia

A Hospital CEO in Rick Allen's District Said the Budget Bill Would Cost Him His ICU. Allen Said He Was "Dead Wrong."

Allen told a reporter the health cuts wouldn't touch Georgia because Georgia never expanded Medicaid. KFF put the state's loss at $2.29 billion. A hospital in his own district is looking at closing its ICU. He chairs the health subcommittee.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 11, 2026

A Hospital CEO in Rick Allen's District Said the Budget Bill Would Cost Him His ICU. Allen Said He Was "Dead Wrong."

In August 2025, a WTOC reporter caught up with Rick Allen at a restaurant in Statesboro, where he was talking up Trump's budget bill. Days earlier, Sen. Raphael Warnock had stood with health care leaders one county over, and the CEO of Evans Memorial Hospital in Claxton had said his hospital was facing millions in cuts and would likely have to start with the intensive care unit.

The reporter asked Allen the obvious question: do you think supporting this bill is going to hurt people's health care?

"Not in Georgia," Allen said. "No, Georgia didn't expand Medicaid. He's dead wrong there. It's only in expansion states."

He added that it was states like California and New York that would feel it.

That was not true when he said it. It is even less true now.

Claxton is in Rick Allen's district

Start with the man Allen called "dead wrong." Bill Lee runs Evans Memorial Hospital in Claxton, in Evans County — one of the counties Allen represents.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution went through the hospital's numbers that same month. Evans Memorial was staring at a $3.3 million shortfall in 2026, out of about $20 million in annual revenue — roughly $3.4 million of which comes from Medicaid. Lee said the hospital was "looking for places to cut," and that the ICU and physician staffing were where it would start.

Lee did not frame it as politics. "I am a firm believer this isn't about partisan politics," he told the AJC. "This is about relevance and surviv[ability]."

Six months later, on February 24, 2026, Bill Lee sat in the gallery at the State of the Union — as Warnock's guest, with the ICU still on the chopping block.

Allen's own constituent had to get a seat from the other party's senator to be heard about a hospital in Allen's district.

"Georgia didn't expand Medicaid" is the reason Georgia gets hit harder

Allen's argument is that not expanding Medicaid makes Georgia immune. The people who study this say it's closer to the opposite.

Whitney Griggs, health policy director at Georgians for a Healthy Future, explained why to the Georgia Recorder:

"Because Georgia has not expanded Medicaid, we have more low-income individuals enrolled in the marketplace or Georgia Access than most states. Those folks are going to feel the pain of these premium increases the most."

Georgians who would be on Medicaid in another state buy Obamacare plans instead. Which means the part of the law that raises marketplace premiums lands on more Georgians, not fewer.

The numbers, all published before or around the time Allen spoke:

$2.29 billion — KFF's estimate of the reduction in federal health care funding for Georgia from the bill's Medicaid cuts.
310,000 Georgians projected to lose health insurance by 2034 from the law itself. That climbs to 750,000 if the enhanced ACA tax credits are allowed to lapse — which Congress then let happen.
45 health care facilities across 35 Georgia counties at risk of reducing services or closing, per a Georgia Recorder analysis — hospitals, nursing homes and clinics, urban and rural.
96% of Georgia's ACA enrollees use premium tax credits, in a state where marketplace enrollment tripled between 2020 and 2024.
$528 more per year on average, an 85% premium increase, with some counties facing up to $900, according to Century Foundation estimates cited by the Recorder.

A separate analysis by Manatt Health, commissioned by the Georgia Health Initiative, put the coverage loss at 492,000 Georgians by 2034 and warned that "rural regions in southwest Georgia, middle Georgia, and the coastal area are expected to experience some of the steepest declines in coverage, provider revenue, and access to essential services."

That is not California and New York. That is Georgia's 12th District and the districts around it.

Then a Georgia hospital said it out loud

One month after Allen said "not in Georgia," a Georgia hospital put the cause in writing.

St. Mary's Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia announced it was shutting its labor and delivery unit and its OB/GYN center. Here is the hospital's own statement, reported by the Georgia Recorder:

"Changing demographics in our region, physician recruitment challenges, increasing outmigration for labor and delivery services, and recent Congressional cuts to Medicaid solidified this decision."

Pregnant patients in at least four Northeast Georgia counties now get sent to Athens — over an hour away by car. The emergency department can still deliver a baby in a crisis, but not handle anyone who needs a higher level of care.

The context makes it worse. As of August 2025, only 36% of Georgia's rural hospitals still offered labor and delivery at all. And in Georgia, 45% of all births are covered by Medicaid — nearly 60% in rural areas. Cutting Medicaid in a state like this is cutting maternity care, whether or not the state ever expanded.

Jimmy Lewis, who runs the rural hospital network HomeTown Health, told the Recorder that his members were told to prepare for "the most draconian cuts imaginable." He also noted that for his hospitals, Medicaid pays about 85.6% of cost, Medicare pays at best about cost, and self-pay covers 7 to 10% — "so over a normal matrix, we start out losing money."

He is the chairman of the health subcommittee

This is the part that removes "he didn't know" as an option.

In January 2025, Rick Allen was named chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee's Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions. Health is in the title. He holds the gavel.

A subcommittee chairman on health, asked about a hospital in his own district, told a reporter the CEO was "dead wrong" — and got the basic policy backwards on live TV.

Then he voted to make it worse. Allen was one of 197 Republicans who voted to let the enhanced ACA tax credits expire — the exact scenario that takes Georgia's coverage loss from 310,000 to 750,000.

What "dead wrong" actually looked like

Bill Lee wasn't wrong. He was early.

A year on, his hospital is still weighing whether to close its ICU — the unit that handles a heart attack or a stroke before anyone can be moved. Evans Memorial gave up labor and delivery back in 2010. Intensive care is what's left to cut.

And the people of Georgia's 12th District cannot ask Rick Allen about any of it in a room. On February 27, 2025, more than 100 constituents staged a sit-in at his Augusta office asking for a single in-person town hall. One volunteer said she'd looked and could find no record of Allen ever holding one in the Augusta area. Three weeks later, asked directly, Allen answered: "We do that digitally. We do digital town halls." He blamed the anger on "misinformation."

He was the one who said "not in Georgia."

We deserve better.