Hospital doors will be closing. Here's why you should care—and what you can do about it.

Right now, as I'm writing this, U.S. Senators are debating a bill that could determine whether your local hospital stays open. I know that sounds dramatic, but it's not hyperbole. The "One Big Beautiful Bill" that's moving through Congress includes some of the deepest cuts to hospital funding we've ever seen.

And here's the thing - this isn't about some abstract policy debate. This is about whether the hospital where you were born, where your kids might be born, where your parents go for emergency care - whether that hospital will still be there next year.

We're already seeing hospitals close at an alarming rate. In rural areas especially, about one in five hospitals are on the financial edge. Many have already cut services that communities depend on - labor and delivery units, mental health programs, even emergency departments. Once those services are gone, they almost never come back.

The problem is that hospitals lose money on every Medicaid patient they treat. The government simply doesn't reimburse the full cost of care. To make up for some of that gap, states have programs called "State Directed Payments" that help hospitals stay afloat while serving Medicaid patients. It's not perfect, but it's been a lifeline.

This Senate bill would essentially eliminate that lifeline. It caps those payments at Medicare rates, which sounds reasonable until you realize Medicare rates don't cover the actual cost of care either. Hospitals would be forced to choose: keep losing money until they close, or cut services that people need.