In March 2025, two hospitals in Trumbull County, Ohio shut their doors. Nearly 700 employees were furloughed. The county lost its only behavioral health provider.

Nearly a year and a half later they are still closed. The main one, Trumbull Regional Medical Center in Warren, has no license to operate and has lost its Medicare and Medicaid certification. Crews have been taking the signage down.

Trumbull County is in David Joyce's district. Asked about it in April 2026, Joyce said the closure "has been devastating," and said he is working to increase health care access in rural areas through appropriations and funding programs.

Here is what the record actually shows him doing about it.

One letter, in May 2025

On May 14, 2025 — about two months after the doors closed — Joyce joined Senator Jon Husted and Rep. Michael Rulli in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the Justice Department to investigate "the legality of the events that led to the subsequent closures."

The letter asked DOJ to look at Steward Health Care's financial decisions, allegations of Medicaid and Medicare billing fraud, and the possible misuse of federal money. Steward is the bankrupt chain that owned the hospitals before Insight Health System bought them in October 2024. Insight closed both in March 2025, saying Steward never made payments it owed under the bankruptcy.

"If fraud or abuse played any part in this outcome, it is essential that those responsible be held accountable," the lawmakers wrote.

That was a reasonable thing to ask for. It is also the last thing about this hospital that shows up in the public record under his name. Search the news coverage of the Trumbull closures — WFMJ, the Tribune Chronicle, the Vindicator, Ideastream, Business Journal Daily — and the May 2025 letter is the only item where Joyce appears.

No hearing. No bill. No follow-up when the situation got worse — and it got much worse.

What happened after the letter

The hospitals were supposed to reopen. They didn't.

On September 23, 2025, the Ohio Department of Health inspected both facilities. They failed. Insight had planned to restart emergency services that month; the failed inspection pushed that off indefinitely.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also terminated its agreement with both facilities, citing failures in hospital governance, patient rights, discharge planning, and the federal law that requires emergency rooms to screen and treat anyone who walks in.

"We're disappointed Insight can't get it open, disappointed it didn't pass inspection," said Tom Connelly of AFSCME Ohio Council 8, which represents workers there. The nurses, he said, "want to get back to work."

By April 2026, the Ohio Department of Health's own spokesperson could offer nothing: the department and Insight "have had some discussions on next steps, but there are no new developments to report at this time." Insight's statement was that it "is continuing to work on the Trumbull hospital licensing process."

An Ohio state representative, Nick Santucci, floated the possibility that the buildings "may not ever be hospitals again" and suggested repurposing them for other industries.

Seven weeks after the letter, he voted to take $33 billion out of Ohio's Medicaid

Here is the part that matters most, and it is not complicated.

On July 3, 2025 — seven weeks after signing a letter demanding accountability for a hospital collapse in his district — Joyce voted for Trump's budget bill.

That law takes an estimated $33 billion in federal Medicaid money out of Ohio over the next decade. Analysts expect the result to be fewer doctors, more strain on rural hospitals, and worse outcomes for families who already have trouble getting care. As many as 356,000 Ohioans are projected to lose health coverage under it.

Medicaid is how a lot of hospitals in places like Trumbull County stay open. When you cut it, hospitals close. That isn't a prediction — it's the thing Joyce says he finds devastating when it happens in Warren.

So when he says he is working on rural health care "through appropriations," it's worth being precise about what he actually appropriated. He sits on the House Appropriations Committee, which decides where federal money goes. The single biggest health care vote of his term moved $33 billion out of Ohio, and he cast it for.

This is a pattern we keep running into. Shelley Moore Capito voted for the same bill and then cosponsored legislation to prevent rural hospital closures. Cindy Hyde-Smith told Mississippi "Medicaid is not going anywhere," voted to cut it, and started writing rural hospital rescue bills. The vote does the damage. The press release does the cleanup.

The people still fighting for it aren't in Congress

On August 3, 2026 — a year and a half after the closure — people in Trumbull County were still holding events to try to get the hospital reopened. The groups doing it were Good Trouble Trumbull, AFSCME Ohio Council 8, and the Mahoning Valley Solidarity Alliance.

"It's just not a good situation for the community. We needed this hospital," Connelly said.

"I was born in this hospital; it's where my brothers and sisters were," said Patricia Dunbar, an organizer with Good Trouble Trumbull.

The closure left the Warren area with one hospital.

Joyce is not mentioned in the coverage of that event.

What accountability would have looked like

Joyce has been in Congress since 2013. He is a senior member of the committee that writes federal spending bills. He had real tools here. He could have pushed his own committee to attach conditions to federal money flowing to hospital owners like Steward and Insight. He could have demanded a hearing on what private equity ownership did to a bankrupt hospital chain that took federal dollars and left two Ohio communities without care. He could have voted against a law that pulls tens of billions of Medicaid dollars out of his state.

He sent a letter to the Attorney General, and then he voted for the cuts.

A year and a half later, the emergency room is still dark, the signs are coming off the building, and the people trying to bring it back are union members and neighbors organizing on their own time — the same thing that happened in his district when constituents got tired of waiting for a town hall and held their own.

"Devastating" is the right word for it. It just isn't an action.

Source

Insight in talks about reopening the Trumbull County hospital — WFMJ, April 21, 2026. Photo: WFMJ.