Waterville, Maine - Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner accused incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins of "throwing gasoline" on the rural healthcare crisis during an address at a shuttered hospital.

Surrounded by medical professionals and patients, Platner on Wednesday stood outside the Northern Light Inland Hospital in Waterville, which was forced to close in May last year along with a number of local primary care facilities.

Around 5,000 patients were left without general practitioners due to the closure, Common Dreams reports, and the community found itself without a local emergency department and with significantly fewer jobs.

"Waterville Fire and Rescue has tripled its out-of-city ambulance transports," Platner pointed out during a press conference. "A ride that is longer means higher mortality rates."

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"Rural healthcare is not collapsing sometime in the future," Platner said. "This isn't some vague thing we talk about that may happen someday. It is happening now, but it is not an accident."

"No rural hospital closes by chance. It's the outcome of policy, and it is a choice that people in places of political power like Susan Collins have made."

In the coming years, numerous hospitals in Maine are expected to close due to harsh Medicaid cuts that were ushered in as part of President Donald Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill last year.

"The One Big Beautiful Bill is doing exactly what the experts warned it would do. It is throwing gasoline on a crisis that was already raging in Maine's rural hospitals," Platner said, slamming Collins for supporting the funding bill.

Platner's has campaigned as a progressive Democrat, emphasizing the need for universal Medicare for All and a change in political leadership.

"Susan Collins is someone who, for decades now, has represented not their interests, but the interests of those who donate the most money to her," Platner told Common Dreams.