In the News

A coalition of the Bay State’s lawmakers on Capitol Hill have called on bankrupt Steward Health Care to look after some 1,200 workers set to lose their jobs at month’s end.

“Steward must finally act responsibly toward its workers and pay them the severance and accumulated paid time off they are owed,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter sent Thursday to Steward CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre and the company’s chief restructuring officer, John R. Castello.

The company, which is shuttering Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer, by the end of August “must not seek to avoid its financial obligations to them through bankruptcy,” the lawmakers wrote.

Massachusetts two Democratic U.S. senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, signed the letter.

So did all nine Democratic members of the state’s U.S. House delegation: Reps. Richard Neal, D-1st District; James P. McGovern, D-2nd District; Lori Trahan, D-3rd District; Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District; Katherine Clark, D-5th District; Seth Moulton, D-6th District; Ayanna Pressley; D-7th District; Stephen Lynch,D-8th District, and William Keating, D-9th District.

The letter’s release was to have coincided with a since rescheduled proceeding before a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Houston.

The soon-to-be displaced workers are “essential health care providers and employers for the regions they serve, particularly for working-class people and communities of color,” the lawmakers wrote.

“The best outcome for the workers, patients, and communities would be for these hospitals to stay open,” they added.

Last week, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said the state had “agreed to “deals in principle” that would keep the doors open at the company’s five, remaining Bay State hospitals.

Under the terms of the agreement, the state will take control of Saint Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Boston, while new operators would assume control of Saint Anne’s Hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center, the Holy Family Hospitals, and Morton Hospital, Healey’s office said.

The agreement did not extend to Carney and Nashoba Valley, the Democratic governor’s office said.

Last week, Healey mourned those shutdowns and laid the blame for the company’s financial meltdown squarely at the feet of de la Torre.

“I understand that the community, patients, and workers in Carney Hospital and Nashoba Valley Medical Center are rightly upset about these closures, and I want them to know that I am, too,” she said. “I am really upset about what Steward did, which was to run them to the point that after an exhaustive process, unlike the other hospitals, there was no [other] hospital operator willing to come forward with a bid to continue operations of those facilities.”

This week, however, the firms that control the real estate of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton rejected what they say is the state’s low-ball offer for the property and told Healey that they will “vigorously challenge” her plan to take the land beneath bankrupt Steward Health Care’s hospital by eminent domain.

The state offered the companies that control Steward’s hospital real estate $4.5 million on Friday “to purchase the fee and any other necessary property interests in St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center” as the first step towards an eminent domain taking of the land, State House News Service reported.

The companies rejected that offer in a letter late Tuesday, saying the state’s proposal “significantly undervalues the real property underlying St. Elizabeth’s” and represents an amount less than the property’s annual tax bill.