‘Is this kind of the first domino to fall?’ Trump’s Medicaid cuts shut down the only hospital for miles around in an elderly New England mountain town

For more than two decades, Susan Bushby, a 70-year-old housekeeper from a rural ski town in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, took comfort in knowing she only had a short drive to reach the community health center.

The lodgelike medical building, which sits on a hill overlooking town, was like a second home for Bushby and many other patients. The front desk staff knew their names and never missed a chance to celebrate a birthday or anniversary. Staff photos of the wilderness that makes this place such a draw hung on the walls, and bumping into a neighbor in the waiting room was routine.

But last month, this site of the Ammonoosuc Community Health Services in Franconia, a town of around 1,000 people, closed for good.

Officials blamed cuts in Medicaid, the federal program that millions of