Health care cuts in reconciliation bill will especially hurt rural Maine

By Raymond Durkee

I consider myself a conservative, but one who has been very confused in the last decade. The Republican Party used to stand for moral decency, respect for the rule of law and fiscal responsibility. Seems to me that all that has been turned upside down lately.

I want to point out some real problems coming in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that the U.S. House and Senate are now debating and what it means to those of us living in rural Maine. 

Although there are some differences between the House and Senate versions, both have agreed to very large cuts in Medicaid so that the Republicans can support the tax cuts for their wealthiest donors; most of the tax reductions go to the wealthiest folks. 

Both versions are proposing adding approximately $3 trillion to the national debt when you include the interest costs. This is the largest deficit ever proposed by any Congress in U.S. history. So much for Republican fiscal responsibility. They are hoping to defray some of this with tariff taxes we are beginning to pay on all imported goods and groceries. Democrats are out of power in both the House and Senate and have not been involved in the budget discussions.

But that is not the worst for Mainers in the near future. The House version specifies nearly $800 billion in Medicaid cuts, and the Senate version goes farther: it proposes $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts and allows Medicare insurers to charge more for Part B. 

Maybe folks don’t realize that your local Northern Light Health medical facilities in all the rural areas get 66 percent of their revenue from Medicare and Medicaid. You should understand that the Northern Light health systems is more than $600 million in debt and lost $156 million in the last financial year. 

This means that Northern Light facilities in rural areas will either limit services, close, or have to ask for increases in local taxes and rates to continue to provide services in rural Maine, even if these reductions were not coming. We will have fewer local health services, higher Medicare copayments, more eligibility paperwork, and face travelling much longer distances for care. This is not conjecture, this is what federal lawmakers are currently proposing — look it up yourself.

If you live in Aroostook, Penobscot, Washington, Hancock, Piscataquis, Somerset or Franklin county and depend on medical services, you should contact your House and Senate representatives and tell them you care. Seems to me like the multi-billionaires who were on the Trump inauguration platform could forgo another tax reduction and help us out a bit by paying the same tax rates they used to pay a few decades ago. I don’t see rural Mainers needing to help them out.

Durkee is a retired health care executive and longtime resident of Castine