{"id":6588,"date":"2026-10-11T18:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T01:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovecloud.xyz\/?p=6588"},"modified":"2026-10-11T18:37:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T01:37:28","slug":"us-maternity-wards-face-wave-of-closures-as-medicaid-cuts-kick-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovecloud.xyz\/?p=6588","title":{"rendered":"US maternity wards face wave of closures as Medicaid cuts kick in"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>4 Minute, 19 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

Trump\u2019s \u2018big, beautiful bill\u2019 spending cuts will be fully felt next year, but hospitals are already feeling the squeeze
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Maternity wards across the United States are facing a wave of closures as cuts to federal\u00a0Medicaid<\/a>\u00a0funding take effect, experts have warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to analysis by the non-profit Protect Our Care, 52 maternity wards have closed since the HR1 bill was announced in July 2025<\/a>, with a further eight having announced their upcoming closure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bill, which will fully come into effect in the new year, will result in many adults covered through Medicaid<\/a> having to meet new work requirements and being subject to more frequent eligibility checks, while there will be less federal funding for states for Medicaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hospitals which have already permanently closed their maternity wards include the\u00a0Centra Southside Community hospital in Virginia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0St Mary\u2019s Sacred Heart hospital<\/a>\u00a0in rural north-east Georgia, which both cited upcoming federal policy changes to Medicaid as a reason.

Experts are expecting to see more closures of maternity units in the run-up to and after the federal changes to Medicaid come into effect in the new year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re deeply concerned that these changes already have and will continue to worsen an already serious maternity care crisis,\u201d said Erin Jones, senior director of legislative and strategic counsel of the non-profit March of Dimes. \u201cReduced funding and restrictions on how states finance Medicaid will put additional pressure on state budgets and hospitals, increasing the risk that communities lose essential maternity services and specialized providers close to home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added that the consequences for maternity care would be particularly devastating within rural communities. The non-profit has identified 31 at-risk rural hospitals with labor and delivery services, with their possible closure leaving 96 counties without a labor and delivery unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLosing these services means fewer places to deliver safely and fewer options for pregnancies requiring specialized care,\u201d Jones added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 40% of births in the US are paid for by Medicaid, while the country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among high-income nations, at a rate of 17.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the\u00a0latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures<\/a>.

Benjamin Sommers, a professor of healthcare economics at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health<\/a>, said the changes to Medicaid would \u201cabsolutely\u201d affect women who are pregnant and specialist pregnancy organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not true that this law in any way protects Medicaid for pregnant mothers, for low-income parents. It adds financial strain to the providers and the insurance program that they rely on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sommers, who was deputy assistant secretary for health policy under Joe Biden, said although the new work requirements for Medicaid are supposed to exempt pregnant women, his research has shown that many women are not enrolled in the Medicaid pregnancy pathway, meaning the state might not know that they\u2019re pregnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cSomeone could be enrolled through Medicaid expansion, they could get pregnant and they could mistakenly think \u2013 because they heard it on the news that this law doesn\u2019t affect pregnant people \u2013 [they\u2019re] fine, and it turns out the state doesn\u2019t know they\u2019re pregnant and they lose coverage.\u201d

Vaishu Jawahar, director of policy and programs at Protect Our Care, added: \u201cWhen you\u2019re cutting Medicaid by a trillion dollars, you\u2019re cutting this money from hospitals. So these hospitals are going into the red and being forced to make hard decisions, which usually results in maternity wards being closed as they are extremely expensive to run.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in early 2025, the entirety of the CDC\u2019s pregnancy risk assessment monitoring system team, which oversees a population-based surveillance system collecting data on women\u2019s experiences before, during and after pregnancy, was placed on administrative leave by the Trump administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an upcoming\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0authored by academics and former CDC staff, seen by the Guardian, these actions by the federal government disrupted the collection and management of \u201cone of the nation\u2019s most important sources of population-based information on pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, postpartum experiences, and maternal and infant health\u201d which has existed for over four decades.

\u201cThere are no other datasets like it. Teams like mine used to have access to this data before the portal was shut down, and so now there\u2019s no way to study the more recent trends in maternal and infant health,\u201d said Rita Hamad, professor of social epidemiology and public policy at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and co-author of the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re very worried that the cuts to US safety net policies or barriers that keep people able to access those programmes are going to have detrimental effects on maternal and infant health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added: \u201cI think we\u2019re going to see those geographical and maternal disparities widening. Or we\u2019re not going to see it because we don\u2019t have the data, but that\u2019s what is going to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department for Health and Human Services has been contacted by the Guardian.

Reprinted from The Guardian<\/p>\n

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