"These Hospitals Aren't Going Anywhere": At His June Town Hall, He Contradicted It Himself Three Minutes Later

Healthcare Source: Telephone Town Hall (official recording) MISLEADING

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Why This Matters

On his June 25, 2026 telephone town hall — the official recording is posted on his YouTube channel — Rep. Langworthy told listeners that rural hospitals warning of closure risk are a story someone is “trying to sell you.” This escalates his October 2025 claim that closure warnings were “pure fiction” — after which Westfield Memorial completed its conversion to a Rural Emergency Hospital, giving up inpatient beds. It also collides with his own words on the same call, with what his own callers told him, and with the one thing he never mentioned in 71 minutes: the roughly 450,000 New Yorkers who would lose Essential Plan coverage six days later under the law he voted for.

Statement

Source: Telephone Town Hall, June 25, 2026 (official recording, posted to YouTube June 28; machine transcript)

[1:00:58] “And just as an aside for anyone listening, every rural hospital that I’ve met is not on the verge of closure no matter what people are trying to sell you. They are all … doing a great job providing great services and growing. So there is, for all the naysayers out there, these hospitals aren’t going anywhere.”

The Facts

Claim elementVerdictDetail
“Every rural hospital that I’ve met is not on the verge of closure”TECHNICALLY HEDGEDThe hospitals he visited that week (UPMC Chautauqua, Arnot) are not the ones at issue; the at-risk list is longer than his itinerary
“For all the naysayers … these hospitals aren’t going anywhere”MISLEADINGThe generalization is contradicted by the district record — and by his own statements on the same call
Implied: closure warnings are something “people are trying to sell you”MISLEADINGThe warnings come from the Fiscal Policy Institute, hospital operators’ own filings, and completed downgrades/closures

He Contradicted It Himself on the Same Call

Within the same recording — the second and third items within three minutes of the statement — Langworthy:

  1. Confirmed Brooks Memorial is leaving Dunkirk (1:03:09 — about two minutes after the quote above). Asked by a Silver Creek caller about the Brooks Hospital building, he said the operator is “building a brand new hospital in Fredonia” and “I would doubt that they’re going to keep that as any kind of operational hospital” — describing the mothballing of a hospital building in one of the district’s poorest cities minutes after saying hospitals “aren’t going anywhere.”
  2. Acknowledged the loss of Lake Shore (1:03:59 — three minutes after). Discussing the new Fredonia facility, he said it would help “especially when you know we lost Lake Shore” — his own words for a hospital that closed.
  3. Heard the closures described by his own callers. A caller from Panama, a nurse at a critical-access hospital, told him: “Lake Shore had just closed … everybody has to go to Erie or Buffalo to have a baby … they have gutted all our small hospitals.” (Caller statements are attributed as such, not asserted as verified fact — but he did not dispute them.)

What the Record Shows

  • Eight NY-23 hospitals at risk of closure — the most of any congressional district in New York State, per the Fiscal Policy Institute (July 2025). Eight of the district’s twelve hospitals rely heavily on Medicaid.
  • Westfield Memorial — the hospital he stood in front of when he called closure warnings “pure fiction” in October 2025 — had a -59.1% operating margin and converted to Rural Emergency Hospital status, ending inpatient care. A downgraded hospital is not “fiction.”
  • Jennie B. Richmond Nursing Home (80 beds, Springville, operated by Bertrand Chaffee Hospital) entered “orderly closure” beginning June 2026. It is a nursing home rather than a hospital, but it is precisely the kind of rural facility his reassurance glosses over.
  • The funding context he omits: on the same call he praised (at 3:56) the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund as created “solely for our rural hospitals” — without mentioning that Congress created that fund to offset the Medicaid reductions in H.R. 1 (his Yea, Roll Call 190), the same reductions the Fiscal Policy Institute identifies as the primary new pressure on these hospitals’ finances. See Rural Health Transformation: $212M.

In plain language: the hospitals he toured for the cameras are investing and growing, and he is right about those. But “these hospitals aren’t going anywhere” is not true of the district: one converted to emergency-only after he called warnings fiction, one closed, one is leaving its building, a nursing home is closing now, and eight are on an independent at-risk list — pressures his own vote intensified. He described two of those departures himself, on the same call.

What He Did Not Say in 71 Minutes

The town hall was held six days before approximately 450,000 New Yorkers lost Essential Plan coverage on July 1, 2026 — a change the New York State Department of Health attributes directly to H.R. 1, which he voted for. The words “Essential Plan” do not appear anywhere in the recording. His four mentions of Medicaid include the assurance that “a whole lot of federal Medicaid investment, no matter what people say, those dollars come down and help build hospitals.” See The Essential Plan Cliff.

Questions This Raises

  1. If closure warnings are something “people are trying to sell,” why did Westfield Memorial give up inpatient care within months of his “pure fiction” statement?
  2. How does “these hospitals aren’t going anywhere” square with his own description, on the same call, of Brooks leaving its Dunkirk building and the district having “lost Lake Shore”?
  3. Why did a 71-minute town hall six days before the Essential Plan cliff not mention the roughly 450,000 New Yorkers losing coverage — including ~26,000 in Western New York?

Sources

Note: This entry quotes a machine transcription (whisper.cpp) of the official recording; the key quotes are cited with timestamps so they can be verified directly against the recording, and the full transcript is published with a disclaimer noting possible transcription errors in proper names. The statement’s “that I’ve met” hedge is acknowledged in the analysis: taken literally, it covers only the hospitals he visited. The verdict addresses the generalized reassurance (“for all the naysayers out there, these hospitals aren’t going anywhere”) delivered to a district-wide audience. Caller statements are attributed as caller statements. This entry does not allege any facility is certain to close; it documents the gap between the reassurance and the documented record.

Last updated: July 2, 2026