View Hospital Crisis Watch Here.
Washington, D.C. – Today, Protect Our Care is launching “Hospital Crisis Watch” to track the devastating outcomes of Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans’ spending bill. The bill made the largest health care cuts in history, slashing Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, in order to fund tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations. Not only will 17 million Americans have coverage ripped away from them, but hundreds of cash-strapped emergency rooms, clinics, hospital wards, and long-term care facilities will be forced to slash services or shut their doors entirely.
Now, the consequences of this Republican bill are playing out in real time. As hospitals and nursing homes close, people will lose jobs, states and local economies will suffer, and entire communities will be left without access to care. From rural Nebraska to coastal California and Maine beach towns, people across the country, including seniors, people with disabilities, expectant mothers, and cancer patients, will face higher health care costs, have to travel further to get care, and endure longer wait times in overwhelmed emergency rooms. As more hospitals and care facilities buckle under the pressure, the damage will only spread.
“Donald Trump and Republicans just sacrificed hospitals and lifesaving care for millions so they could hand out massive tax breaks to billionaires,” said Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse. “This GOP bill won’t just hurt people who rely on Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act – it rips care from everyone who depends on the hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes that will shut their doors as a result. With Hospital Crisis Watch, we’re exposing the full scale of harm Republicans are inflicting on America’s health care system – community by community, hospital by hospital. The public deserves to know who’s responsible, and we won’t stop until Trump and Republicans are held accountable.”
By The Numbers:
- Over 330 hospitals will likely be forced to close or scale back their services after GOP policies gut over $400 billion in critical funding – forcing more Americans to travel further for maternity care and emergency rooms, and face longer wait times.
- Independent rural hospitals will lose 56 percent of their net income on average, leaving 380 of such facilities underwater and in danger of closing their doors.
- Hospitals count on Medicaid to keep their doors open. Medicaid accounts for one fifth of spending on hospitals, one fifth of hospital discharges, and at least one in five inpatient days in nearly every state.
- Hospitals are the sixth largest employer in the country. Republicans will undermine an industry that employs nearly 7 million community servants, from doctors to nurses to social workers, to hand out tax breaks to the ultrawealthy. An estimated 477,000 health workers will lose their jobs as a result of GOP cuts to Medicaid.