Letter from Chip Northrup

Can Bassett Survive MAGA?

The primary hospital of the Bassett network, Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, is, based on its most recent financial statements, as little as two years away from going bankrupt. Losses for FY 2024 increased to $45 million, up from $39 million the previous year (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/135596796/202533179349306798/full). Liabilities increased by $60 million. At that rate, the main Bassett hospital’s net worth could be zero within two years.

For the past few years, Bassett has filed a consolidated holding company statement for Bassett Healthcare Network that includes all the assets—Fox, Schoharie, Cooperstown—which collectively was bankrupt as of the end of last year (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/133218680). The statement for the consolidated Bassett Healthcare Network indicates that, system-wide, the Bassett group is already bankrupt, $29 million in the hole as of the end of 2024.

Like most rural general hospitals in stagnant markets, Bassett’s patients are overly dependent on federally subsidized healthcare, which accounts for approximately 70 percent of revenue. After working only eighty seven (87) days in 2025, the MAGA-majority Congress adjourned for the year without passing any healthcare reforms. Nada, as we say here on the Gulf of Mexico.

That means that a significant percentage of Bassett’s patients will have two choices in 2026: going into debt and declaring medical bankruptcy or going without healthcare and getting sick in the MAGA equivalent of a third-world country.

Chip Northrup
Cooperstown