Virginia's 71 free and charitable clinics are bracing for a surge in patients after the passage of President Donald Trump's so-called "One Big, Beautiful Bill," which is projected to leave more than 300,000 Virginians uninsured. That's according to a report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee that was produced as the bill made its way toward passage.
"The bill is going to put Medicaid at risk, and it's going to force thousands off of their coverage," says Janine Underwood is executive director of the Bradley Free Clinic in Roanoke. "What's going to end up happening is they're going to end up funneling into nonprofit clinics like ours. We're already stretched beyond capacity. We're seeing an overwhelming patient demand and with these additional cuts to Medicaid, it's going to force us to make some difficult decisions."
The Bradley Free Clinic is one of 21 free and charitable clinics that began accepting Medicaid when Virginia expanded eligibility for the program in 2019.
Underwood says that at one point, roughly half of the clinic's patients were covered by Medicaid, but that number has dropped since the state began unwinding the program after the Covid-19 pandemic. That's occurred even as the clinic is seeing a surge in demand, growing from 1,200 patients pre-Covid to 4,000 now.
Statewide, about 30,000 of the 110,000 patients seen annually in free and charitable clinics are covered by Medicaid. That's according to Rufus Phillips, CEO of the Virginia Association of Free and Charitable Clinics.
"I'm not sure how the 300,000 additional uninsured that will occur with this bill will be taken care of," Phillips says. "It's not like clinics can just ratchet up their capacity. They don't have the funding to do so. I don't know where there's going to be the room to serve these people properly."
The Bradley Free Clinic and 70 others around Virginia continue to provide free care to patients. That's all it can do for now, as they await more analysis on the budget bill and its effects.
