Medicaid cuts could force service reductions at Suffolk hospitals, study says

Stony Brook University Hospital stands to absorb one of the hardest hits on Long Island if federal Medicaid cuts ripple through safety-net care, with an estimated $55 million annual loss that could force service reductions at Suffolk County’s largest tertiary hospital. For patients, that would not just be a budget problem in Albany or Washington. It could mean longer waits in the emergency department, fewer specialty appointments, and more pressure on already crowded hospitals across the region.

A Public Citizen analysis released in March found 446 hospitals nationwide were at heightened risk of closing or reducing services because of Medicaid and CHIP cuts tied to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law July 4, 2025. The group said the at-risk hospitals served about 6.6 million patients in 2024 and employed roughly 275,000 direct patient-care workers. The analysis used Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services financial data from 2022 through 2024 and flagged hospitals where Medicaid and other low-income government programs made up at least 20% of revenue and the hospital was already operating at a loss.

On Long Island, the pressure is concentrated at institutions that anchor care for both Nassau and Suffolk counties. Stony Brook University Hospital is the region’s major academic medical center and Level I trauma center, handling high-acuity cases that smaller hospitals cannot absorb. Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, a public safety-net teaching hospital, serves a large share of Medicaid patients and has long faced financial strain. Mercy Medical Center in Rockville Centre and Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside were also among the hospitals identified in local coverage as vulnerable to the policy’s fallout.

The broader impact could spread well beyond the hospital campuses themselves. If Stony Brook cuts back on specialty care, trauma support or inpatient capacity, Suffolk patients would have fewer local options and could be pushed to other hospitals farther away, adding travel time and delaying treatment. That matters most for patients who already depend on Medicaid, the uninsured and people with chronic conditions who use emergency rooms and safety-net clinics as their main doorway to care.

New York officials have warned that the law could strip coverage from as many as 1.5 million state residents and cost the state health system billions, including an estimated $8 billion hit to hospitals. Public Citizen researcher Eileen O’Grady said the danger is not abstract: hospitals already under strain could be forced to cut services or close. For Suffolk County, the risk lands first at Stony Brook, where a multimillion-dollar funding shock would quickly show up in staffing, wait times and what care patients can still get close to home.