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'Hospital Crisis Watch' Tracks Healthcare Center Closures Under Trump-GOP Budget Law
"Donald Trump and Republicans just sacrificed hospitals and lifesaving care for millions so they could hand out massive tax breaks to billionaires."
Jul 11, 2025
A healthcare advocacy group launched a project Thursday aimed at tracking hospital closures under the recently enacted Trump-GOP budget law, whose unprecedented cuts to Medicaid could force clinics across the United States to cut services or shut down entirely in the near future.
More than 700 rural hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicaid reimbursements, were already in dire financial straits prior to passage of the Republican budget package, which includes more than $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts. The new law is expected to push many struggling facilities over the edge.
"The consequences of this Republican bill are playing out in real time," said Protect Our Care, the advocacy organization behind new project, titled Hospital Crisis Watch. Earlier this month, a clinic in a rural Nebraska community announced that it would soon shut its doors, citing "anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid" as a major factor.
One analysis by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill estimates that more than 330 hospitals in rural areas across the U.S. are at risk of closing or curbing their services due to the Republican assault on Medicaid.
"With Hospital Crisis Watch, we're exposing the full scale of harm Republicans are inflicting on America's healthcare system."
Protect Our Care noted that 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."
" Donald Trump and Republicans just sacrificed hospitals and lifesaving care for millions so they could hand out massive tax breaks to billionaires," said Brad Woodhouse, the president of Protect Our Care. "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 healthcare system—community by community, hospital by hospital," Woodhouse added. "The public deserves to know who's responsible, and we won't stop until Trump and Republicans are held accountable."
The project comes as hospital officials and healthcare experts are increasingly sounding the alarm about the looming impact of the Trump-GOP Medicaid cuts.
"What this does is put us at risk when the respiratory season hits," Benjamin Anderson, CEO of Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System, told NBC News earlier this week, saying the Medicaid cuts ensure that the 180-bed hospital his organization oversees will have to continue its hiring freeze.
"We're at real risk of wearing out the staff we have right now," Anderson warned.
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UAW President Denounces Trump-GOP Budget Law as 'Total Betrayal' of American Working Class
"This bill isn't governance," said United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain. "This is a class war waged from Capitol Hill."
Jul 09, 2025
After Republicans pushed their unpopular reconciliation package through Congress last week, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson hailed the legislation as a step toward "a future where working Americans can feel relief."
But Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), argued in an op-ed Tuesday for The Detroit News that such "hollow promises" are an attempt to obscure "a brutal agenda: stripping working-class people of security, dignity, and power while lining the pockets of billionaires" with trillions of dollars in tax breaks.
"The budget reconciliation bill that the Republicans just passed isn't just bad policy—it's a full-blown attack on America's working class," wrote Fain. "For the UAW and the millions of workers we represent, four core issues define what it means to live and work with dignity: a livable wage, affordable healthcare, retirement security, and time to enjoy life beyond the job. On every one of those fronts, this bill delivers nothing but setbacks."
Fain pointed specifically to the GOP law's more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. Those cuts, combined with Republicans' refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to lapse at the end of the year, are expected to strip health coverage from around 17 million Americans over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The UAW president also points to the Republican law's lesser-known attack on Medicare recipients. The legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law late last week, would restrict enrollment in Medicare Savings Programs—potentially causing more than a million low-income seniors to lose access—and force more than $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare.
"These aren't numbers on a spreadsheet," Fain wrote. "These are real people losing access to lifesaving care."
"By passing this legislation, the government is telling working-class families they're on their own while billionaires get even more tax breaks."
While the Trump White House and congressional Republicans have tried to cast the budget law's tax provisions as worker-friendly—in some cases by outright lying about what's in the legislation—Fain noted that the law's limited deductions for tips and overtime will only benefit a small sliver of Americans, and only until 2028.
"On the other hand, many of the tax benefits in this bill for the wealthy are indefinite and have no expiration date," Fain wrote. "This is the same bait-and-switch the Trump administration used to sell its 2017 billionaire tax giveaway to the American people: small, temporary tax breaks for working people, with massive, long-term benefits for the wealthy and corporate America."
"This bill isn't governance. This is a class war waged from Capitol Hill," Fain continued. "It shifts the balance of power even further toward the billionaire class and hollows out the rights and dignity of labor. By passing this legislation, the government is telling working-class families they're on their own while billionaires get even more tax breaks."
"It's a total betrayal," he added.
Fain is among many prominent labor leaders who spoke out forcefully against the Republican budget measure and warned about its potentially catastrophic impact on millions of workers.
National Nurses United, the nation's largest nurses union, called the day of the bill's final passage one of "the darkest days in the history of U.S. healthcare."
"People will suffer and die because of the cuts in this legislation to fund tax cuts for billionaires—certainly in the short term and potentially for decades to come if nothing is done," the union said. "Lawmakers have effectively signed the death warrants for millions."
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said that "every member of Congress who voted for this devastating bill picked the pockets of working people to hand billionaires a $5 trillion gift."
"But if the politicians who rammed through this shameful bill think they can sneak away without anyone knowing the damage they've done and the chaos they've created," said Shuler, "they don't know anything about the labor movement."
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Trump Social Security Chief Applauds Budget Bill That Will Harm Social Security's Finances
"The Social Security Administration put out a statement celebrating a bill that would lead to faster insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund."
Jul 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's handpicked Social Security chief issued a statement Thursday applauding the passage of a Republican reconciliation bill that analysts say would negatively impact the New Deal program's finances.
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano called the Republican legislation, which Trump is expected to sign on Friday, a "historic step forward for America's seniors" and a reaffirmation of the president's "promise to protect Social Security."
But experts warned in the lead-up to the bill's passage that its massive tax cuts would bring forward the date at which Social Security will no longer be able to pay out full benefits in the absence of legislative solutions.
"By raising the standard deduction for all filers, and raising it even higher for some seniors, fewer Social Security beneficiaries will pay taxes on their benefits, and those who do will pay lower rates," said Kathleen Romig and Gbenga Ajilore of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Raising the standard deduction would deliver little to no benefit to lower- and moderate-income families while reducing income into Social Security's trust funds."
The Social Security Administration put out a statement celebrating a bill that would lead to faster insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund pic.twitter.com/aRhLfcRiIv
— Bobby Kogan (@BBKogan) July 4, 2025
According to the latest Social Security Board of Trustees report—released ahead of the reconciliation bill's passage—the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund will be able to pay out 100% of benefits until 2033. Thereafter, if lawmakers don't act, the fund will be able to pay out 77% of total scheduled benefits.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a conservative think tank, estimated in an analysis released last month that the Republican reconciliation package would accelerate the depletion of Social Security and Medicare's trust funds by a year. Compared to current law, the GOP measure would also result in "even deeper" cuts to Social Security benefits after the trust fund depletion date, the analysis projected.
Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a leading champion of Social Security Expansion in Congress, highlighted CRFB's findings in a video posted to social media a day before House Republicans secured final passage of the reconciliation bill.
"We have to act now, not just to protect Social Security but to expand the benefits," said Larson. "It needs to be protected, it needs to be enhanced—not cut and diminished."
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