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graham platner
At Shuttered Hospital, Platner Accuses Collins of 'Throwing Gasoline' on Raging Rural Healthcare Crisis
While Sen. Susan Collins "brags" that she's secured money for rural hospitals, the funding is a "pittance" compared to the billions in Medicaid cuts she helped push through, said her Democratic challenger in Maine.
Jul 01, 2026
Joined by medical professionals, patients, and local healthcare advocates outside a hospital in central Maine that was forced to shut down last year, Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner on Wednesday highlighted the human impact of the crisis that he said Sen. Susan Collins is actively making worse by prioritizing "health insurance companies, Big Pharma, and private equity firms" over Mainers—even as the Republican claims to bring crucial funds to the state's struggling rural hospitals.
Platner held a press conference outside the former Northern Light Inland Hospital in Waterville, Maine, which closed last May along with its associated primary care centers.
The closure left roughly 5,000 patients without general practitioners and further away from an emergency department and inpatient care, as well as putting more than 300 local residents out of work.
The hospital system said last May that it was closing Northern Light Inland due to rising operational costs, stagnant or reduced reimbursement rates, and a tight labor market with more competition for a smaller pool of qualified healthcare workers. A hospital official told Maine Public last year that the 48-bed facility was losing more than $1 million per month due to operating costs.
Since Northern Light Inland closed, said Platner, "Waterville Fire and Rescue has tripled its out-of-city ambulance transports," as there is no regular public transportation between Waterville and Augusta, where the nearest hospital is. Patients who were once charged $50 for a ride to the hospital now have to pay $400, the combat veteran and oyster farmer-turned-Senate candidate said, "and a ride that is longer means higher mortality rates."
One former patient of the healthcare center, Kyla Mihalovits, said her family was "thrown into a state of uncertainty regarding our access to healthcare" after Northern Light Inland closed and her primary care provider relocated to Unity, Maine.
"When your community no longer has access to high-quality [healthcare], it doesn't matter if you identify as a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent. You have lost something that your community needs to survive."
"We consider ourselves lucky to get an appointment once a year for our annual checkups. Many of my friends and neighbors lost their doctors and are on excruciatingly long waiting lists," said Mihalovits, adding that she no longer has access to women's healthcare and does not know where she will obtain her first mammogram after she turns 40 this year.
"Because my hospital closed, I no longer have any semblance of continuity of care available for me at this crucial time in my life," she said. "For women, especially since we are very often not listened to, dismissed, or even believed by certain healthcare providers, especially when we see them for the first time, continuity of care is crucial. Because our community hospital closed, it will take years for my family to establish care outside of our community."
Stories like Mihalovits', said Platner, show that "rural healthcare is not collapsing sometime in the future. This isn't some vague thing we talk about that may happen someday. It is happening now, but it is not an accident. No rural hospital closes by chance. It's the outcome of policy, and it is a choice that people in places of political power like Susan Collins have made."
Rural hospitals in Maine are projected to continue closing due to nearly $3 billion in Medicaid cuts that are expected to hit the state over the next 10 years—cuts that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), a law that also included tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and whose passage Collins helped ensure by casting a decisive vote to send it to the Senate floor.
"Before the bill's passage, nearly half of Maine's rural hospitals were found to be at risk of closing while some, like the one here today, had already shuttered," said Platner. "The One Big Beautiful Bill is doing exactly what the experts warned it would do. It is throwing gasoline on a crisis that was already raging in Maine's rural hospitals."
The Senate candidate emphasized that Collins voted to advance the bill out of committee "one day after a private equity billionaire, Stephen Schwarzman, the chair of [Blackstone], and a man who will personally reap huge profits from the bill, gave $2 million towards her reelection campaign."
Collins frequently emphasizes that she ultimately voted against the OBBBA almost exactly a year ago—after Republican leaders had secured enough votes to pass the legislation without her—but Platner stressed that "her vote was pivotal to advancing it and paving the way for its eventual passage. She knew what she was doing. She was profiting off of her vote."
He also took particular issue with the five-term senator's "bragging" about the Rural Health Transformation Program, a $50 billion fund also included in the OBBBA through which, Collins said in a recent ad, she secured $190 million for Maine rural health systems.
"She likes to brag," said Platner, "that she uses her power to bring money to Maine to help the state, except that the money she brings is a pittance. It is a pittance in comparison to the money sucked out of the state through tax cuts for corporations and billionaires that she happily goes along with. It is a pittance to the money sucked out of our system in the forever wars that we send trillions to year after year that she has always supported. A pittance toward the billions of dollars we continue to send to Israel to fund a genocide in Gaza."
The candidate, who is a proponent of Medicare for All, added that "people see through" Collins' claims that she is a "moderate" Republican.
"The idea that she stands up for the needs of Mainers over that of corporations is really laid bare with something just like the Rural Health Transformation Program," Platner told Common Dreams. "The numbers don't lie. It's very obvious what she's doing. And I am seeing in every single corner of the state and hearing from not just Democrats, but Independents and Republicans, who fundamentally understand that Susan Collins is someone who, for decades now, has represented not their interests, but the interests of those who donate the most money to her. And they're sick and tired of it."
While Collins has boasted that the program included in the OBBBA is helping rural Maine residents, the law is already harming millions of people across the country and making it harder for them to access crucial healthcare a year after it was signed by President Donald Trump. According to Protect Our Care, 3.8 million Americans have lost coverage through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program since the law was passed. Fifteen million people are projected to lose their healthcare by 2034. More than 1,000 hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes have shut down since the OBBBA was passed, as well as 40 maternity wards.
"When your community no longer has access to high-quality [healthcare], it doesn't matter if you identify as a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent," said Platner. "You have lost something that your community needs to survive and you have lost it because establishment politicians like Susan Collins have for decades fought not for your community, have fought not for the needs of working Mainers, but have fought to protect the profits of health insurance companies, corporations, and private equity, and that must come to an end."
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'I Didn’t Say What Susan Collins Did Is Criminal,' Says Platner. 'I Said It SHOULD Be'
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner accused his Republican opponent of exploiting a loophole to funnel money to the lobbying firm where her husband worked for a decade.
Jun 26, 2026
Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner on Thursday unveiled a sweeping anti-corruption agenda featuring a plank named after incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, accusing the Maine Republican of using the power of public office to direct money to her husband's firm and enrich herself.
Platner's proposed "Collins Rule" would require senators to "recuse themselves from any vote, decision, or oversight activity involving an agency from which their spouse’s firm receives government contracts." Underlying the proposal is the Platner campaign's allegation that Collins "funneled more than $76 million in federal contracts to her husband's lobbying firm"—a claim that Collins' campaign denounced as "a lie."
In a social media post on Thursday after Platner announced his proposed "Corruption Crackdown," Collins wrote that "a man I have never met held a press conference and accused me of criminal conduct," referencing the Platner campaign's claim about the federal contract dollars flowing to her husband's firm.
"That is outrageous and false," Collins added.
Platner responded with a social media post of his own. "I didn’t say what Susan Collins did is criminal," he wrote. "I said it SHOULD be criminal."
In a nine-page document outlining its anti-corruption agenda, Platner's campaign writes that "no existing law" prevents the spouse of a US senator from "being enriched through winning contracts from agencies the senator oversees."
"Hiring your spouse is banned. Arranging for your spouse’s firm to receive millions from agencies you oversee is, apparently, fine," the document states. "This is plain corruption, and we will not stand for it."
"We’re taking this fight directly to Susan Collins and her billionaire donors, and we won’t stop until power is returned to the working people of Maine."
Collins' campaign manager rejected Platner's characterization of the senator's record and said she "has not funneled any money to Tom Daffron," her husband.
Daffron, who married Collins in 2012, was a registered lobbyist in 2006-2007 and, for the subsequent decade, served as chief operating officer for Jefferson Consulting Group, the firm that Platner's campaign says benefited from Collins' votes to the tune of $76 million.
News Center Maine noted that, "in its accounting, Platner’s campaign pointed to a list, compiled by searching the USA Spending website, of contracts awarded to Jefferson Consulting by the US Departments of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, State, Interior, and Veterans Affairs. Fifty-five million dollars came from two contracts with USAID, the Agency for International Development, roughly three-quarters of that $76 million."
"The Collins campaign did not dispute the total amount in contracts," News Center Maine added, "but said it was the Obama administration, not Congress, that was responsible for doling out those funds between 2009 and 2016." (The executive branch awards federal contracts that are funded through congressional appropriations.)
During a press conference on Thursday, Platner rejected the notion that Collins' support for appropriations that ultimately benefited the firm that employed her husband was innocuous because she wasn't responsible for awarding the contracts.
"My entire life, I have heard from the political system that all of these very obvious mechanisms of corruption aren't actually corruption," he said. "That when we see people appropriating funds, when we see procurement systems in place, that the money comes from appropriations from the Senate and from the House, that somehow these things are entirely divorced, and it's just sheer coincidence that people who are connected to those in power wind up receiving lots of extra money."
"Obviously that's false," Platner added. "Any normal person can see that if you are directly tied to the power of the United States senator and you yourself benefit from it, and that senator's household benefits from it, that there's obviously some form of connection there."
Watch:
In addition to the "Collins Rule," Platner's anti-corruption agenda calls for barring members of Congress and their spouses from trading stocks, "under penalty of imprisonment."
"As long as sitting members of Congress are allowed to hold and trade stock connected to the industries they have a hand in regulating, the public will keep asking whether their policy decisions serve our best interest—or their own bank accounts," the agenda reads.
Collins has opposed bipartisan legislation that would ban congressional stock trading, arguing for better enforcement of existing laws such as the STOCK Act—which the Maine Republican has violated dozens of times by missing the 45-day deadline to report her husband's trades.
NOTUS reported earlier this year that Daffron "purchased a Pfizer corporate bond worth from $15,001 to $50,000 on February 3, but Collins didn’t disclose the purchase to the Senate" until late March. Collins, whose net worth skyrocketed following her marriage to Daffron, says she has never owned or traded individual stocks during her three-decade Senate career.
Platner's agenda calls for "dramatically" increasing penalties for STOCK Act violations, which typically amount to a minuscule $200 fine. The Democratic candidate argues that "criminal prosecution—including imprisonment—[must be] on the table for the worst offenses, not a $200 parking ticket."
The Platner campaign's "Corruption Crackdown" also calls for overturning the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, shuttering the revolving door between Washington and corporate America by permanently banning former lawmakers from lobbying Congress, prohibiting candidates for federal office from receiving corporate PAC money, and requiring the Pentagon to pass an audit before it receives any additional funding.
"The establishment has rigged the system with legalized corruption and poisoned our elections with billionaire money and a politics that enriches the powerful at the expense of working people," Platner said Thursday. "We’re taking this fight directly to Susan Collins and her billionaire donors, and we won’t stop until power is returned to the working people of Maine."
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On Dobbs Anniversary, Graham Platner Highlights ‘Stirring Defense’ of Kavanaugh by Susan Collins
With the Supreme Court's overturning of abortion rights just as unpopular as it was four years ago, Democrats are hoping to highlight the "toxic, anti-choice records" of their GOP opponents.
Jun 24, 2026
Fresh off an endorsement from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is continuing to hammer his Republican opponent, Sen. Susan Collins, over her vote to confirm US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which helped set the stage for the right-wing court to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion in 2022.
Platner marked the four-year anniversary of the court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization on Wednesday by posting a video of Collins (Maine) from 2018, standing before the Senate and giving what he called a "stirring defense" of Kavanaugh, whose nomination by President Donald Trump was at risk of being derailed by accusations of sexual assault from three women that had been aired during his confirmation hearing.
Collins, who'd go on to serve as a deciding vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the high court, described the then-federal judge as "an exemplary public servant" whom she'd hoped would "work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court, so that we have far fewer 5-4 decisions."
Around that time, she said she'd been assured that Kavanaugh viewed Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion before fetal viability, as established precedent that he would keep in place if confirmed.
Of course, Dobbs itself ended up being a 5-4 decision, with Kavanaugh being one of the five conservatives who voted to hand decision-making on reproductive autonomy back to the states. (The court also voted 6-3 to uphold the 15-week Mississippi abortion ban at the center of the case.)
Since the ruling, 13 states have almost or totally outlawed abortion, while seven more have restricted it to between 6 and 12 weeks of gestation, according to KFF. States with bans have seen increases in both infant and maternal deaths, and delays to emergency and miscarriage care from providers unsure if they are putting themselves at legal risk.
As Collins has run for her sixth term in the Senate, her pivotal vote for Kavanaugh has come back to haunt her. While Collins said in 2022 that she had been "misled" by Kavanaugh about his stance on Roe, she has insisted this month that she did not "regret" voting to confirm him.
She has, however, appeared eager to downplay the impact of her decision. On Monday, she falsely stated that, "Whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned, given the 6-3 vote.”
In fact, the vote to fully overturn Roe was 5-4, as Chief Justice John Roberts did not join his fellow conservatives in ending the precedent, leading Platner to accuse her of "lying through her teeth."
While abortion does not rank high on the list of issues Americans say will determine their vote, the Dobbs decision is just as despised—if not slightly more so—compared with four years ago, when it helped to fuel an unexpectedly strong Democratic showing in the 2022 midterms.
According to a nationwide poll from Marquette University this May, 61% of Americans still said they disapproved of the decision to overturn Roe, compared with 58% who said the same thing in June 2022 shortly after the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaked.
As the second Trump administration turbocharges attacks on reproductive rights, pro-choice groups are hoping to make Collins pay for her role in midwifing this new reality and have thrown their full weight behind Platner, who has said he'd fight "tooth-and-nail to restore and protect reproductive freedom."
"Mainers deserve a senator they can trust to have their backs at every turn. It is clear that it is not Susan Collins,” said Planned Parenthood Action Fund president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in a statement endorsing Platner on Monday. "We know we can count on Graham Platner to fight for everyone to get the essential, lifesaving care they need as part of a pro-reproductive rights Senate majority."
Maeve Coyle, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), said the party is seeking to highlight its Republican opponents' "toxic, anti-choice records" at the national level in the hope that "the American people will vote against Republicans who paved the way for Roe’s demise and cheered on the rollback of our rights.”
A press release sent by the DSCC on Wednesday highlights the voting records of other top GOP midterm targets, including Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who signed an amicus brief in support of overturning Roe and has said he opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest or to protect a mother's life. It also called out Reps. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) and Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), who co-sponsored total national abortion bans that would have also outlawed in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The Maine Democratic Party, meanwhile, has zeroed in on Susan Collins' vote for Kavanaugh with a new digital ad and a series of prominent newspaper ads that draw a direct line between her decision and the slew of abortion bans that followed.
“Susan Collins wants Mainers to forget what happened after she cast the decisive vote for Brett Kavanaugh. But Mainers haven’t forgotten," said Kristi Johnston, a spokesperson for the Maine Democratic Party.
"Four years after Dobbs, Collins continues to defend that vote while rubber-stamping more anti-abortion judges onto the federal bench," she added. "Mainers deserve to know exactly what role Susan Collins continues to play in stripping away reproductive freedom.”
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