NEW: Lombardo Falsely Takes Credit For Nevada’s First Standalone Children’s Hospital After Backing Trump’s Steep Medicaid Cuts
New reporting debunked Joe Lombardo’s claims taking credit for Nevada’s first standalone children’s hospital. In reality, he’s critically undermined its opening thanks to his support of Donald Trump’s budget bill which cuts health care funding and will drastically cut into the hospital’s future revenue. Lombardo’s campaign and dark money group has already spent $2.7 million on airwaves spreading this misleading claim.
Lombardo has actively hindered the hospital from opening after endorsing Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which lowered the hospital provider tax cap — the key revenue source funding the state’s increased Medicaid reimbursement rates that the hospital was counting on. That increased Medicaid reimbursement rate was credited with making the children’s hospital financially feasible in the first place. Since then, Lombardo has refused to call on his “commanding officer” to reverse these Medicaid cuts forcing the hospital to rely on philanthropy to operate.
Without any real health care accomplishments of his own, Lombardo falsely said he and other lawmakers passed legislation to incorporate a children’s hospital in Southern Nevada — except no such bill exists. In reality, efforts to open this hospital started “decades” ago and “spanned multiple governors.”
Nevada Independent: Governor touts Nevada’s first children’s hospital. How much credit should he really get?
Key points:
- More than $2.7 million in campaign advertisements have praised Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) for establishing Nevada’s first children’s hospital — a bright spot in a state with a chronic lack of healthcare providers.
- Lombardo’s re-election campaign launched with an ad touting the hospital’s future groundbreaking. A separate ad, run by the dark money nonprofit Service First Fund, thanked the governor for “bringing the first standalone children’s hospital to Nevada.” In an interview with KTNV, the governor also highlighted that during his term, legislation passed to incorporate a children’s hospital in Southern Nevada.
- But the narrative around who deserves credit for Intermountain Health’s Las Vegas children’s hospital project, which is set to open in 2030 and is still in the pre-construction phase, may be a bit more complicated.
- Lombardo has publicly supported President Donald Trump and touted the cuts within last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but the bill will reduce revenue from a provider tax that was initially credited with making a children’s hospital possible and cuts Medicaid funding that many child patients rely on.
- Democrats have criticized the governor for not pushing back against lowering the provider tax cap rate. State Sen. Fabian Doñate (D-Las Vegas), who chairs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, said he views the ads highlighting the hospital as “a little bit disingenuous” in light of the struggles the hospital may face with the Republican-backed cuts.
- Discussions about building a standalone children’s hospital in Nevada have been taking place for decades, although Doñate recalled that the effort likely started in earnest around 2016 or 2017 and spanned multiple governors.
- Lombardo has said that he and other lawmakers passed legislation to incorporate a children’s hospital in Southern Nevada, although there was no bill specific to Intermountain Health’s development of the children’s hospital.
- Still, Doñate contends that even with that commitment, the hospital may not be able to offer all services or systems as intended and worries about an overreliance on philanthropy.
- “Philanthropists are more focused on the thing that’s going to develop the next milestone. They’re more focused on capital expenditures that are going to bring new facilities or bring new service lines,” he said. “They’re not looking to be the lifeline of a facility.”
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