This woman from Keene says everyone will need to travel for care if local hospital closes—and she would know

Potential rural hospital closures loom in New Hampshire, after congressional Republicans and President Trump passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in July. One Keene woman is worried about what it means for her hospital, and the health care of her community.

Jodi Newell, 45, has lived in Keene for around a decade. Cheshire Medical Center is her local health care facility—and it’s the only major hospital in town. Today, it’s at risk of closing due to Republican Medicaid cuts.

About 23,000 people in Keene rely on Cheshire Medical Center for their care, plus thousands more from surrounding smaller towns.

“People up to 45 minutes away come to Keene, particularly for medical care,” said Newell, whose work as a state representative for Cheshire County makes her especially aware of the area’s needs. “A lot of the towns that are around here don’t have the capacity for a larger hospital.”

The “big beautiful bill” will cut federal health spending by around $1 trillion over the next decade, and will drop roughly 12 million Americans from their health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Thousands more will see their insurance premiums go up as a result.

Hospitals with a high number of Medicaid patients, or that are already running on slim margins, are at risk of closing due to those cuts. That’s a textbook scenario for rural hospitals like Cheshire Medical Center.

According to a June report by Manatt Health, rural hospitals will lose 21 cents out of every dollar they receive in Medicaid funding due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Rural residents rely heavily on Medicaid for health insurance, largely because people in rural regions have lower average incomes and fewer job opportunities that provide employer-sponsored insurance. Medicaid covers almost a quarter of all women of childbearing age, and finances half of all births in rural communities.

If Cheshire were to close, that would mean the end for the only major hospital in the area, and one of the only hospitals that Newell’s children have ever known.

Her kids, both teenagers, don’t have any major health complications that require regular visits to Cheshire, but they get sick just as often as any other kid does.

“That’s literally where we get all of our care,” Newell said. “My kids and I have been going there for regular checkups and anything medical we need, including the emergency room.”

She said losing Cheshire would mean she’d have to travel far within the state or even across state lines in order to get care for her family.

“There are a couple of hospitals that are [in state],” Newell said. “There’s Monadnock Community Hospital, but it’s only 25 beds.”

Newell said her travel time would go from around five minutes to well over an hour.

She added that she was recently at Cheshire with her son, and happened to overhear an elderly couple in the same room.

“It became clear that on a regular basis, this gentleman experiences issues that he has to go to the emergency room for. He’s a regular, you know,” Newell said. “I can’t imagine this person having to drive an hour and 15 minutes to get to a place when emergencies like that happen.”

“There are just so many people that rely on [the hospital], that at the end of the day, we’re risking people’s lives if it doesn’t exist,” she said.

While New Hampshire’s state government is controlled by Republicans, the state’s entire congressional delegation—senators and representatives alike—are Democrats. In the Senate, both Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Sen. Maggie Hassan voted no on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as did Rep. Chris Pappas and Rep. Maggie Goodlander in the House of Representatives.

The act still passed the Senate by a 51-50 margin, and with a 218-214 Republican majority in the House. Every Democrat in Congress voted against the bill, along with some Republicans who broke ranks to oppose it as well.