The closure has left nearly 5,000 patients without GPs and away from emergency departments and inpatient care, as well as leaving more than 300 local residents out of work.
Hospital system He said Last May, Northern Light Inland closed due to high operating costs, stagnant or declining reimbursement rates, and a tight labor market with more competition for a smaller pool of qualified health care workers. Hospital official He said Maine Public last year reported that the 48-bed facility was losing more than $1 million a month due to operating costs.
Since the closure of Northern Light Inland, “Waterville Fire and Rescue has tripled its out-of-town ambulance transports,” Plattner said, as there is no regular public transportation between Waterville and Augusta, where the nearest hospital is. Patients who used to charge $50 for a trip to the hospital now have to pay $400, “and a longer trip means higher death rates,” the veteran and oyster farmer-turned-Senate said.
Kayla Mihalowitz, a former patient at the health care center, said her family “went into a state of uncertainty regarding our access to health care” after Northern Light Inland closed and moved her primary care provider to Unity, Maine.
“When your community doesn’t have access to high quality [healthcare]It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. “You’ve lost something your community needs to survive.”
“We consider ourselves lucky to have an appointment once a year for our annual checkups. Many of my friends and neighbors have lost their doctors and are on very long waiting lists,” Mihalovits said, adding that she no longer has access to women’s health care and doesn’t know where she will get her first mammogram after she turns 40 this year.
“Due to the hospital closure, I no longer have any semblance of continuity of care available to me at this crucial time in my life,” she said. “For women, especially since we are often not heard, rejected, or even believed by some health care providers, especially when we see them for the first time, continuity of care is critical. Given the closure of our community hospital, it will take years for my family to be able to establish care outside of our community.”
Plattner said stories like Mihalowitz’s show that “rural health care is not going to collapse at some point in the future. This is not some mysterious thing we’re talking about that might happen one day. It’s happening now, but it’s not a coincidence. No rural hospital closes by accident. It’s the result of policy, a choice made by people in places of political power like Susan Collins.”
Rural hospitals in Maine are expected to continue to close due to the nearly $3 billion in Medicaid cuts 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 which Collins helped secure its passage by casting a deciding vote to send it to the Senate floor.
“Before the bill was passed, nearly half of Maine’s rural hospitals were found to be at risk of closing while some had already closed, like the ones here today,” Blattner said. “This big, beautiful bill does exactly what experts warned it would do. It pours gasoline on a crisis that was already raging in Maine’s rural hospitals.”
The Senate nominee stressed that Collins voted to move the bill out of committee “one day after private equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the Senate president, voted to move the bill out of committee.” [Blackstone]“And the man who personally stands to profit hugely from the bill has given $2 million to her re-election campaign.”
Collins repeatedly asserts that she ultimately voted against OBBBA nearly a year ago — after Republican leaders had enough votes to pass the legislation without her — but Blattner stresses that “her vote was pivotal in advancing it and paving the way for its eventual passage. She knew what she was doing. She was taking advantage 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 OBBBA and through which Collins said in a recent announcement she secured $190 million for rural health systems in Maine.
“She likes to brag that she’s using her power to bring money into Maine to help the state, except the money she brings in is a pittance. It’s a pittance compared to the money taken out of the state through corporate tax cuts and the billionaires she happily accompanies. It’s a pittance to the money sucked out of our system in the perpetual wars we send trillions into year after year and that she has always supported. A pittance to the billions,” Blattner said. Of the dollars we continue to send to Israel to fund the genocide in Gaza.”
The candidate, a supporter of Medicare for All, added that “people are aware” of Collins’ claims that she is a “moderate” Republican.
“The idea that it champions the needs of Mainers over the needs of corporations has already been exposed by something like the Rural Health Transformation Program,” Plattner told Common Dreams. “The numbers don’t lie. What she’s doing is very clear. And I see in every corner of the state and I hear not just from Democrats, but from independents and Republicans, who fundamentally understand that Susan Collins is someone who, for decades, represents not their interests, but the interests of those who donate the most money to her. And they’re fed up with that.”
While Collins boasted that the program included in the OBBBA helps rural Maine residents, the law is actually hurting millions of people across the country and making it harder for them to access vital health care a year after President Donald Trump signed it. 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 Expected They will lose their healthcare by 2034. More than 1,000 hospitals, clinics and nursing homes have been destroyed close Since OBBBA was passed, plus 40 Maternity wards.
“When your community doesn’t have access to high quality [healthcare]”It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent. You’ve lost something that your community needs to survive, and you’ve lost it because establishment politicians like Susan Collins didn’t fight for decades for your community, they didn’t fight for the needs of working Mainers, but they fought to protect the profits of health insurance companies and corporations and private equity, and that has to end,” Blattner said.
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