Proper cutbacks in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” by President Donald Trump who focuses on abortion providers threaten to drastically reduce access to a wide range of sexual and reproductive health care in Maine – although the state has protected reproductive rights.
Two organizations – planned parenting and Maine family planning – which serve about half of the patients in the entire sexual and reproductive health care network of Maine, run the risk of being excluded to receive medicaid payments thanks to a provision in the tax and expenditure package that the Senate has been bothered on Tuesday and is now confronted with a mood. The provision would prohibit medicaid financing for all healthcare services of Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning for a year.
Medicaid is a state-federal program that provides health insurance for the health insurance policy More than 70 million people of households with a low income throughout the country, including Hundreds of thousands of people alone in Maine. If the bill passes with that provision, reproductive health experts fear that some of the most vulnerable patients do not have access to the care they need.
The provision applies to organizations for non -profit organizations in health care that offer abortions and received More than $ 800,000 from Medicaid in 2023. Both Planned Parenthood and Maine Family Planning offer abortion services, and abortion is legally in Maine to around the viability of the fetus. But Medicaid Dollars do not finance abortions-on very limited exceptions and cover instead other, non-abortion healthcare services that offer the clinics of the organizations, such as contraception, STD tests and treatment and cancer research.
Read more: Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ and the Supreme Court have endangered planned parenting financing
Maine Family Planning runs 18 clinics in medically disadvantaged areas in the state, according to the president and CEO of the organization, George Hill. The organization also has a mobile medical unit, which is designed to serve people who can be confronted with extra challenges that have access to a physical site, such as people who are not in the house or who struggle with opioid user disorder. Almost half of the patients who visit the clinics of Maine Family Planning every year are eligible for Medicaid, says Hill.
And for about 70% of the patients who visit the clinics of the organization, that is the only visit to the health care they will make over a year, making it their only contact point with the health care system, according to Hill. He adds that three of the 18 clinics that need Maine Family Planning offer first -line services.
The exclusion of Maine -family planning from Medicaid would be a “blow to people who live in communities who really don’t have much access to health care,” says Hill. Although Hill says that it is not yet clear how the organization will adapt if the bill passes by the provision, he is concerned that Medicaid recipients would not have the same level of access to care. According to Hill, about 20% of the annual budget of Maine Family Planning – Grougly $ $ 1.9 million – comes according to Hill.
“I don’t want to alert staff, I don’t want to alert patients,” says Hill. “We even keep taking care of people [if] We are excluded from the Medicaid program for as long as possible. “
But the organization already has’ very narrow margins and [has] To raise funds to come up with the gaps, so that we are able to provide care to people who cannot afford to pay for it, “says Hill. If the bill spends the provision, Hill says that Maine Family Planning will consider a lawsuit.
Planned Parenthood has said That if it is “destined” by the bill, almost 200 of his health centers in 24 states run the risk of closing. According to the organization, more than 90% of those clinics in states where abortion is legal. About 60% are in medically disadvantaged areas, areas with shortages of primary care providers or rural areas, said Planned Parenthood. When the bill passes, Planned Parenthood warned that more than 1.1 million patients throughout the country could lose access to health care.
Three Republican senators broke the parties to vote against the bill at Democrats on Tuesday, including Susan Collins of Maine. In a statement, Collins said That her objections to the bill “in the first place from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, which influences families with low incomes and rural care providers such as our hospitals and nursing homes.” She added that almost a third of the population of Maine depends on the Medicaid program. A representative for Collins did not immediately respond to a request for comments about the senator’s thoughts about the provision that focuses on Maine Family Planning and Planned Parenthood.
The threat for the Medicaid financing of Maine Family Planning comes after the Trump administration is the title X -funds of the organization froze -as well as funds for 15 other organizations, including some planned parental branches -at the beginning of April. Maine Family Planning, the only recipient of Title X in the State, receives approximately 20% of the operational budget of the family planning program financed by the federally financed. As with Medicaid, the Title X program does not finance abortion care, but does cover other health care for people from households with a low income. While Maine’s legislative power recently passed A financing account that says Hill would help to reduce the loss of Title X financing, that funds will only Let it last for a year. After that he is not sure what will happen if the Trump administration does not restore the title X financing of the organization.
Hill says that, as an abortion provider who receives federal funds, Maine family planning ‘in the sights of the Trump government’ is.
“We are not excluded or excluded from Medicaid on the basis of fraud or criminal behavior; we are excluded because we are abortion providers, clear and simple,” says Hill. He calls the bill “a back door attack to limit access to abortion care in Blauwe States where abortion is legally and accessible by providers such as we prevent, such as Maine Family Planning and Planned Parenthood, to participate in the Medicaid program.”
“We’re going to fight this,” adds Hill. “This is a matter of public health.”
#Big #Beautiful #Bill #touch #Maines #reproductive #care