Mass General Brigham investing $400 million in cancer care
BOSTON, Mass. (SHNS)–A week after conducting a second round of layoffs, Mass General Brigham announced a four-year, $400 million investment Tuesday into MGB Cancer as the health care giant braces for its split from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Anne Klibanski, the system's CEO, acknowledged the layoffs as she announced the new investment, which involves renovations at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Faulkner Hospital to create new outpatient spaces.
Medicaid cuts may affect millions of Massachusetts residents
'As we navigate a period of challenging but pivotal change, I appreciate your continued dedication to our patients and to each other,' Klibanski wrote to employees in a Tuesday message, which was shared with the News Service. 'Our reorganization and financial stewardship will strengthen our foundation and enable us to make strategic investment in our patients, our care teams and our mission – preparing us for the ongoing headwinds facing our industry.'
MGB did not specify how many total workers lost their jobs, though The Boston Globe pegged it at around 1,500 positions across the layoffs in March and February.
The system said the layoffs affected mostly management and administrative positions, as MGB contended with a $250 million budget gap over the next two years. MGB argued the layoffs were needed to follow through with planned investments, including for workforce support, new clinical spaces and modernizing facilities.
Klibanski said the $400 million commitment will 'advance medical oncology, radiation oncology, cancer surgery, digital pathology, technology upgrades, support staffing, and patient navigation across MGB.' It will also be used to 'recruit top oncologists, implement digital pathology and enhance clinical support staffing,' MGB said.
'We begin this work now with the goal of ensuring that MGB Cancer is fully operational using our own resources, ready to serve patients before the conclusion of our current agreement with Dana-Farber in Fall 2028,' Klibanski wrote.
The state Public Health Council on Thursday is slated to vote on a determination of need request from Dana-Farber, which is looking to build its own cancer hospital with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
MGB Cancer plans to 'extensively' renovate three floors at the Brigham's Hale Building for Transformative Medicine in the Longwood area to support outpatient clinical space, plus one floor at Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain, Klibanski said. MGB is also looking to relocate clinical, office and research space in the Longwood area, which the system said is 'currently housed mainly at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.'
In other efforts to bulk up oncology services, work is underway at Massachusetts General Hospital, where a new tower is expected to provide 'large-scale new resources for MGB Cancer patients,' Klibanski said. The system is also working on a new exam room and infusion capacity at MGH-Waltham.
'Our goal is to immediately begin to execute on our cancer strategy and provide space for both our existing and new cancer teams to work, perform research and care for patients,' Kevin Giordano, MGB's senior vice president of operations, said in an internal article shared with the News Service.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Biggest Boondoggles in Trump's Big Beautiful Bill
The House reconciliation bill — officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — is extraordinary in how much it robs from the poor to boost the rich. Its tax cuts for the wealthy are financed by cuts to health care coverage (both in Medicaid and Obamacare) that will help Republicans swell the ranks of the uninsured by 16 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But the Big Beautiful Bill is not just an ugly tax bill where society's less fortunate are made to sacrifice for the benefit of the wealthiest. It's also a spending bill that steers hundreds of billions of dollars into new pet projects. This is financed with debt. All in, the BBB will spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over 10 years, according to CBO, likely increasing the national debt by $3 billion when interest payments are included. The bill's spending has angered budget hawks in the Senate like Rand Paul (R.-Ky.). It has been part of the public split between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who calls the bill a 'disgusting abomination' that will squander any supposed savings imposed by DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Conservative budget analysts are sounding the alarm: 'This inability to set priorities is going to bring a debt crisis,' Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute tells Rolling Stone. In fact, the bill would create so much new debt that it risks triggering a mechanism called 'sequestration,' which would impose deep, mandatory cuts to Medicare. These cuts to the health care of America's seniors would start next year, and rise to half-a-trillion dollars over ten years. The BBB's spending provisions have received far less scrutiny than the tax cuts and safety-net slashes. But the bill lards new funds on a range of already-fat-cats — from the military-industrial complex and Big Tech to private prisons and construction concerns. Below we survey the biggest boondoggles of the Big Beautiful Bill: The BBB proposes spending nearly $50 billion for construction of Trump's border wall with Mexico. Sen. Paul, in an appearance on Face the Nation last week, accused the administration of waste. He cited an existing Customs and Border Patrol estimate that wall construction should cost only about $6.5 billion over 1,000 miles: 'They have inflated the cost of the wall eightfold,' said Paul. (After his TV hit, CPB appears to have scrubbed the construction cost estimate Paul quoted from its website.) Paul even questioned the need for more wall, at all, given his view that Trump has 'essentially stopped the border flow without new money and without new legislation.' Offering just a small taste of the anticipated building bonanza, the Trump administration awarded a $70 million, 7-mile wall-construction contract to California-based Granite Construction in March. The bill includes $45 billion for 'Adult Alien Detention Capacity' and 'Family Residential Centers.' This funding would enable the administration to ramp up its mass deportation program for undocumented immigrants. As the nation has seen from recent high-profile Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at restaurants, this involves ripping productive members out of society and making them wards of the state, at great public cost, until they can be deported. The money would be a boon to private prison contractors and construction firms. For a taste of where this is headed, consider that the administration has already inked a 15-year, $1 billion deal with GEO Group to house ICE detainees at Delaney Hall, a 1,000 bed facility in Newark, New Jersey. The mayor of the city was arrested by ICE amid a recent protest at the facility. The private prison company is well connected to the Trump administration. As Rolling Stone has reported, Attorney General Pam Bondi is a former lobbyist for GEO Group, which also made a $500,000 donation to the Trump inaugural committee. A GEO subsidiary donated $1.3 million to a Super PAC that backed Trump's 2024 election. The BBB puts up nearly $25 billion for the Golden Dome. The satellite-based missile defense project builds off the branding of Israel's 'Iron Dome,' a ground-based defensive system that can intercept rockets and missiles launched from local militants or state actors like Iran. 'To the extent we match Iron Dome technology, we will be well protected from a missile attack from Canada or Mexico,' says Riedl of the Manhattan Institute, sarcastically. 'But not necessarily from Russia, North Korea or China.' In reality the Golden Dome appears to be Trump's revival of the Ronald Reagan era Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI — a hugely expensive, largely ineffective space-based missile-defense system derided in the 1980s as 'Star Wars.' 'Ultimately this is $25 billion more for SDI' says Rieidl. 'This is a noble idea — but a lot of spending up until now hasn't brought a lot of success.' Trump envisions the BBB as a downpayment on a total investment of $175 million. The Golden Dome promises to be a golden goose for defense contractors. SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Trump's billionaire benefactor Elon Musk, who's currently feuding with Trump, is reportedly vying for a contract. So are the Peter Thiel-linked tech firm Palantir and longtime military-industrial heavyweights like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Including the Golden Dome, the Big Beautiful Bill increases America's Pentagon spending by a colossal $150 billion. 'This is a bill from the military-industrial complex advocates who are padding the military budget,' according to Paul, who has long criticized the Defense Department for failing to pass every audit to which it's been subjected. Budgets are moral documents. And metaphorically people often speak of the tradeoff between 'guns and butter' — or programs that defend the public and those that keep the public out of misery. The guns side of the Big Beautiful Bill is financed entirely by cuts to butter. The bill strips $128 billion in funding to the states for the SNAP food assistance program that keeps American families from going hungry. It also aims to avoid another $92 billion in spending by knocking people out of the program with red tape and work requirements, including for parents of argues that the Pentagon should be forced to achieve cost efficiencies before it receives any new federal dollars. 'One of DOGE's great failures was essentially ignoring the enormous waste and cost overruns inside the Pentagon. There is a reason the Defense Department cannot pass an audit. There is so much waste. It has significant cost overruns — particularly in government contracts and procurement — that absolutely must be addressed before we further increase defense spending,' says the Manhattan institute fellow. The House bill steers new money to more than a dozen weapons systems, including many dogged by cost overruns, construction delays, performance issues, and questions of combat capability. On the airplane side, this list includes: $4.5 billion for the B-21 Raider, the Air Force's newest long-range stealth bomber, which cost nearly $700 million per aircraft to produce. The two-person Northrup Gruman-built plane may be poorly suited to modern warfighting, where swarms of unmanned drones are becoming the dominant air threat. $3.2 billion for the Boeing-built F-15EX. The planes cost $90 million a pop, making them more expensive than the notoriously costly F-35A. Unlike that fighter, the F-15EX is not a stealth aircraft. And production has been snarled by manufacturing problems. A recent federal assessment put it bluntly: 'Boeing has experienced increased quality deficiencies.' Ships include: $4.6 billion for Virginia Class submarines. The nuclear submarine program has a reported cost overrun of $17 billion and has delivered boats massively behind schedule. The contractors are General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries. The Pentagon already has 23 of these submarines. $2.1 billion for San Antonio Class 'amphibious transport docks.' This ship was put on production pause in 2023 because of massive cost overruns. The boats are supposed to land Marines into onshore combat, but have been found by DOD testers to only be suitable 'in a benign environment' because the ship is 'not effective, suitable and not survivable in a combat situation.' Huntington Ingalls Industries is the contractor. The Pentagon already has 13 of these boats. More from Rolling Stone Donald Trump Is Destroying the Economy and Waging War on the Poor Trump Moves to Deploy National Guard to L.A. Over ICE Protests 'Dejected' Trump Says Relationship With Musk Is Over; Calls Him a 'Big-Time Drug Addict': Report Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Nearly 11 million Americans would lose insurance under Trump's tax bill, analysis says
About 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under the President Donald Trump's tax cut bill that cleared the House but faces a tough test in the Senate, a new analysis shows. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said about 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 under the bill, including 1.4 million undocumented residents who get coverage through state-funded programs. The legislation that cleared the House would require nondisabled Americans on Medicaid to work at least 80 hours per month or qualify for an exemption, such as being a student or caregiver. The bill also would strip coverage to immigrants who get Medicaid through state-funded programs. The analysis said the bill would cut federal spending by about $1.3 trillion through 2034. But it would also deliver tax cuts of $3.75 trillion, and the federal deficit would increase nearly $2.4 trillion over the next decade. Health analysts said if the Medicaid changes as well as tweaks to the Affordable Care Act marketplace clear Congress, the effects on health insurance coverage would be significant. The CBO earlier estimated nearly 4 million people would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 if Congress did not extend sweetened COVID-19 pandemic-era tax credits that have made ACA plans more affordable for consumers. Trump's Medicaid overhaul as well as the expiration of the more generous ACA tax credit could jeopardize health insurance coverage for nearly 15 million people, said Kathy Hempstead, a senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "We're making a giant U-turn here," said Hempstead. "Are we really going to be a thriving, productive society if we have a huge share of our population uninsured?" Hempstead said the uninsured might delay care and accrue more medical debt. She also said hospitals and doctors also will take a financial hit as uncompensated care rises. "There's going to be a big hit on on the health care economy as people stop getting care and start trying to get care that they can't pay for," Hempstead said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CBO says 10.9 million to lose insurance under Trump tax bill
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Forbes
Big Beautiful Bill Looks To Reverse Affordable Care Act Coverage Gains
The House budget reconciliation bill, dubbed the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act,' includes large cuts in Medicaid spending that could lead to millions of newly uninsured individuals if the legislation passes in the Senate. The proposed law also contains provisions that alter the Affordable Care Act exchange landscape, potentially leading to millions more uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that at least five million current marketplace enrollees would lose coverage by 2034. The nonpartisan and policy research firm KFF says the number of people with marketplace plans could shrink even more, by around eight million. Changes in the ACA marketplace would make coverage more expensive, as enhanced tax credits expire, and harder to obtain as open enrollment windows shorten, the paperwork burden for beneficiaries increases and automatic re-enrollment ends. Americans who purchase health coverage through the ACA marketplace exchanges could also soon face higher out-of-pocket maximums in their coverage plans, which means higher cost-sharing. The United States Treasury Department announced in Sept. 2024 that almost 50 million people have obtained healthcare coverage through marketplace exchanges created by the ACA since its enactment more than a decade ago. The Department data show that one in seven Americans have been or are covered by the law. And between President Biden's inauguration in Jan. 2021 and Sept. 2024, 18.2 million Americans got ACA coverage for the first time. Rising enrollment since 2021 has been driven by an expansion under the Biden Administration of premium tax credits to include individuals and families with household incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty level, which equates to $58,000 for a single person and $120,000 for a family of four. Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate, in concert with the Trump administration, are now looking to reverse some of those gains. The ACA has gone through a tumultuous history since it was signed in 2010. The law has faced repeated calls for repeal by Republicans. For several years following its passage it wasn't a particularly well-liked piece of legislation, Yet the ACA is now more popular than ever, with over 60% of the public having a favorable view of the law, according to KFF. The ACA is a comprehensive reform bill, passed by Congress in 2010, that increases health insurance coverage for the uninsured and implements a wide range of reforms to the health insurance market as well as an expansion of Medicaid, the public insurance program that provides health coverage to low-income families and individuals. Importantly, under the ACA, individuals who may have been uninsured due to preexisting conditions or limited finances can secure affordable health plans through the health insurance marketplaces established by the law. The demographics of people on Medicaid are fairly similar to those enrolled in ACA plans. The legislation has its critics. They point to certain flaws in design and implementation, Indeed, in the early years under the Obama Administration, insurers exited in droves and premiums rates increased substantially. Under the first Trump administration, ACA enrollment fell overall while numbers of uninsured rose by more than two million. Following unsuccessful efforts to scuttle the ACA, the president issued executive orders to 'improve ACA market dynamics.' ACA exchanges did stabilize in the latter half of Trump's first term as insurers returned and the rate of premium growth decreased. When Biden assumed office, his administration sought to enlarge the ACA program and counter several of the changes implemented by the first Trump administration that had shrunk its size. The Biden administration was largely successful in terms of increasing the number of people who signed up in the ACA exchanges and reducing the percentage of Americans without health insurance. Troubled times for folks enrolled in the ACA exchanges aren't solely because of possible passage of the budget reconciliation bill. CVS Health announced last month it will pull Aetna out of the ACA marketplace in 2026, leaving about one million people across 17 states searching for new healthcare coverage. Aetna's withdrawal from the marketplace will mark the second time the carrier stepped away from the ACA exchanges. The company left the ACA marketplace in 2018 and came back in 2022. Other carriers left the individual health insurance marketplace in 2017 and 2018 amid uncertainty over whether the ACA would be repealed or replaced. While there isn't the same kind of uncertainty now regarding the ACA's survival, disruption is occurring in the space. This could soon lead to more carriers exiting the market.
