WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Jason Smith (MO-08), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, expressed his wholehearted support for Missouri’s application for Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funding in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz.

The Rural Health Transformation Program is a historic $50 billion investment in rural health included in Republicans’ working families tax cuts, which Congressman Smith coauthored and ushered through Congress earlier this year. The fund is designed to supercharge access to health care infrastructure and delivery in rural communities, incentivizing states to create real solutions for their rural communities and ensure they are sustainable for future generations.

Congressman Smith wrote, “Missouri is the definitive example of the rural setting my Republican colleagues and I had in mind when we crafted the RHTP, with 40 percent of Missourians living in rural areas, many of those in the southeast Missouri communities I represent. In its application for RHTP funds, Missouri proposes to fight chronic disease and coordinate patient care through an innovative model which will foster sustainable investments in rural care delivery, deploy cutting-edge technology to improve care coordination, provide broader telehealth access, and hold providers accountable for better managing patients’ health. This model has already proven successful as a pilot project in my own congressional district, and I write today to strongly endorse Missouri’s application and ask that you give it full consideration.”

“Missouri’s RHTP application is focused on coordinated care, harnessing technology, and reducing chronic disease, all goals that are in lockstep with the priorities you and President Trump have emphasized through the program, and goals that will serve rural Missouri. On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of southeast Missourians I represent and the millions of rural Missourians statewide, I wholeheartedly endorse Missouri’s RHTP application and look forward to its implementation,” the letter continues. 

You can read the full letter here.