Last Friday, Governor Andy Beshear, his advisor.

Rocky.

Rocky Adkins and people from Appalachian Regional Health Care cut the ribbon to open up a mobile health clinic that will travel around eastern Kentucky.

During that opening, both Beshear and Adkins expressed concerns on how helpful the clinic will be if proposed Medicaid cuts become a reality.

This thing, came to us in a notion back in July 2023.

Floods, when we were searching for help, and Marshall University stepped up and brought us their mobile health unit in eastern Kentucky, and we realized the value of that.

I was proud to serve as co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission, and we were able to bring a record $47 million of new investment into Kentucky just from that commission.

This was the most ever given to a single state, which I was going to make sure of if I was going to be the co-chair.

That year, those funds went to 44 projects in the region that are helping a lot of people.

One of these projects is behind me.

It's this mobile clinic.

We can extend, expand, expand our services throughout Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and beyond those borders throughout the entire state of the Commonwealth.

This year, the services we're going to offer include wellness visits, traditional, acute care visits, and so forth.

Women's Health Services is a is a huge service that we hope to expand throughout our region as well.

But this is a great day for RH.

It gives us an opportunity to expand, and reach the most vulnerable patients.

They can't come to us.

We're taking health care to them at a very affordable cost.

If another flood occurred or another disaster happens, we can deploy this and take this out to people.

We have two clinic rooms in here, and then a registration area.

So we really anything that you would do in a clinic, in a primary care clinic can be done for the most part.

In here, we can give vaccines, we can draw basic labs.

So it's going to be a really big benefit for all of our patients.

And we're just really excited to get this up and running.

We're at a critical crossroads, with over $700 billion being cut in previous and current policies, bills that are being recommended out of DC.

And with that $700 billion cut to Medicaid.

The threat to rural health care is a real issue and is one that needs to be talked about seriously, especially over the next few weeks to come.

And we need to talk about it, because rural health care and health care for Eastern Kentucky is critical for us to be able to grow the economy in the future.

Let's talk about the real issue of what's getting ready to happen, not only less health care for our people in Eastern Kentucky, but the loss of thousands of jobs across our region.

There was a study that suggested over 35 rural hospitals in Kentucky might close if these cuts go forward.

Those are 35 hospitals that people go to to get the services they need 35 hospitals that help people in a pandemic where thankfully, we had those beds, 35 hospitals that if they're not there, people have to drive hours just to see the doctor they used to see.

And 35 hospitals that employ thousands of Kentuckians that are at risk of losing their jobs.

When we look at how this impacts Americans, folks, it's almost 17 million Americans that could lose their coverage.

That's almost four times the population of our state on three, one, two, three.

All right, all right.

The mobile clinic will be mostly stationed in Floyd County, Kentucky.

It will also travel into southern West Virginia to help those who need it.