{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://harshbarger.house.gov/media/press-releases/harshbarger-marks-national-rural-health-month-calls-continued-investment-rural", "Harshbarger Marks National Rural Health Month, Calls for Continued Investment in Rural Care", "2025-11-21", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "House", "TN", "Diana Harshbarger", "H001086", "harshbarger.house.gov", "harshbarger", "https://harshbarger.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 This week, Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), Co-Chair of the Congressional Bipartisan Rural Health Caucus, delivered remarks on the House Floor celebrating National Rural Health Month and reaffirming her commitment to strengthening healthcare access in America\u2019s small towns and rural communities.\n\nImage\n\nHarshbarger recognized the nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and first responders who \u201ckeep healthcare alive in America\u2019s small towns and rural communities,\u201d noting that in East Tennessee, \u201crural healthcare, it\u2019s a lifeline.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey [Rural Americans] depend on a nurse to drive during the night and before dawn to check on a patient, or the pharmacist who knows every family by name and stretches every dollar to keep medicine affordable. It\u2019s the doctor who stays late to see one more patient because there\u2019s no one else to take the next shift \u2014 these are the people who form the backbone of our rural healthcare communities,\u201d said Harshbarger. \u201cThey deserve a system that works as hard for them as they do for us.\u201d\n\nHarshbarger highlighted the challenges facing rural communities, including hospital closures, strained workforces, and Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) driving independent pharmacies out of business. She underscored her bipartisan work to bring transparency and accountability to PBMs and to support domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing, including facilities like USAntibiotics in Bristol, TN.\n\nAs Co-Chair of the Rural Health Caucus, Harshbarger celebrated this year\u2019s passage of the Working Families Tax Cuts, signed into law by President Trump, which contains the largest rural healthcare investment in American history \u2014 a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund.\n\n\u201cThis critical legislation included the single largest investment in rural healthcare in history, Harshbarger said. \u201cThat\u2019s $50 billion for a rural healthcare transformation fund to reinvest federal savings directly into the communities who need it most, expand telehealth, and recruiting and retaining rural healthcare workers.\u201d\n\nHarshbarger also highlighted her bill, the Rural Physician Workforce Production Act, which would give rural hospitals the tools they need to train, attract, and retain more physicians.\n\n\u201cThese aren\u2019t abstract policy debates \u2014 they are about real people in real places,\u201d Harshbarger said. \u201cThey are about the mom who drives an hour to find a pediatric specialist. They are about the veteran who can\u2019t get his prescription filled because his local pharmacy closed. They are about the nurse who works back-to-back shifts because there aren\u2019t enough hands to go around. And those stories are what drive my work every single day.\u201d\n\nHarshbarger closed by announcing a bipartisan resolution she introduced with Representative Jill Tokuda (D-HI) and 37 bipartisan colleagues recognizing November 20th, 2025, as National Rural Health Day (H. Res. 891).", 1, "2026-04-04T05:28:40Z", "2026-04-04T05:30:10Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://harshbarger.house.gov/media/press-releases/harshbarger-marks-national-rural-health-month-calls-continued-investment-rural"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.581053715199232, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}