CANTON, Mass., July 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The 26,000 nurses and healthcare professional of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) strongly denounce the significant cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act passed by Republicans in Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump. These cuts represent a direct attack on patients, nurses, and the integrity of our healthcare system. Slashing funding to these foundational programs jeopardizes the lives and wellbeing of our most vulnerable neighbors – children, seniors, individuals with disabilities, and low-income families – who rely on public insurance to access care.
The harm will be especially acute in rural and underserved communities and at hospitals with high public-payer mixes. These facilities already operate on thin margins and serve as lifelines for entire regions. Cuts of this magnitude place them at risk of reduction in services or even full closure. When a hospital closes, the impact ripples outward – ambulances travel farther, patients forgo preventative care and risk becoming sicker, and communities lose a vital economic engine. The result is not just a healthcare crisis but a human crisis.
The MNA’s Ongoing Fight to Protect Essential Services
The MNA has a long history of fighting to preserve access to essential healthcare services. As part of that effort, we are proud to advocate for a package of legislation this session aimed at preventing closures and building a healthcare system that serves everyone, regardless of economic status, zip code, or insurance type:
- An Act Relative to the Closing of Hospital Essential Services (S. 1503): Strengthens oversight and transparency when hospitals attempt to eliminate services or close entirely. Requires meaningful public notice, empowers the Attorney General to intervene, and penalizes hospitals that abandon essential services.
- An Act Assessing Healthcare Access (S. 1610): Initiates a comprehensive statewide study to map where healthcare resources fall short, including the impact of past closures and the growing mismatch between need and availability.
- An Act Preserving Access to Hospital Services (S. 1574): Establishes a mechanism for the state to step in and temporarily operate hospitals or clinics at risk of closure, ensuring communities are not left without care due to corporate mismanagement or profit-driven decisions.
These bills are a direct response to the waves of closures and service reductions MNA nurses and healthcare professionals have experienced in recent decades. Massachusetts law must meet this moment of crisis for patients and their caregivers. Access to essential services has declined across the Commonwealth because our healthcare system follows a corporate, profit-driven Wall Street model and our state has limited powers to ensure patients can receive necessary care. As these devastating federal cuts take hold, our state leaders need to ensure mothers and babies, people suffering from mental health or substance use issues, and all our most vulnerable residents can access the care they need.
Impacts on Collective Bargaining and Frontline Care
These federal cuts will not just affect hospital bottom lines, they will undoubtedly be used as justification to attack staffing levels, critical investments in the nursing workforce, and collective bargaining rights.
Patient care quality, and the safety of patients and staff cannot suffer due to these cuts. MNA nurses and healthcare professionals are on the front lines every day, delivering care in extremely challenging environments. Hospital administrators must not balance budgets on the backs of staff while preserving inflated executive salaries or pursuing expansion projects that do not serve the community’s immediate needs.
What We Are Fighting For
This unprecedented assault on our healthcare system requires bold, united action. The MNA is calling for:
- The passage of essential services legislation to assess healthcare access statewide and enact additional oversight and transparency related to hospital closures, including a mechanism for the state to temporarily keep hospitals open.
- Massachusetts state officials to provide stopgap funding as needed to prevent closures and protect access to care, especially in high-risk communities and facilities serving a large public-payer base.
- Hospital systems to prioritize frontline staff and patient safety over profits, executive compensation, or expensive expansion projects. Supporting nurses and healthcare professionals is the only way to ensure high-quality care.
- All of us – nurses, patients, families, and voters – to fight for federal leaders who will defend Medicare, Medicaid, and our right to care. We must elect people who believe that healthcare is a human right, not a budget line to be slashed in service of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.
The MNA will continue to lead the charge to protect patient care access, defend the ability of nurses and healthcare professionals to provide safe, high-quality care, and to ensure that no community is left behind.
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Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 26,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association
