Portland, Maine (AP) – A point of the comprehensive policy and tax law of Republicans, the Medicaid dollars from flowing to the planned parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country, is also supposed to block a huge medical provider in Maine.
Maine Family Planning submitted a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday to restore the reimbursements.
Access to health care in Maine – one of the poorest countries in the northeast and its most rural – is a challenge in areas that are far from population centers such as Portland and Bangor.
Vanessa Shields-Haas, a nurse, said that the organization clinics saw all patients as usual and have carried out Medicaid documents for visits-but not submitted because the provision was put into force as soon as the law has been signed.
“Knowing how difficult it is to access care in this state, and not to enable these community members to access their care, it is cruel,” said Shields-Haas.
Maine clinics only seem to be contained in cuts
The Republican legislature aimed at a planned parenthood in one piece of what President Donald Trump described as a “great” legislative submission that the congress passed and the president signed at the beginning of this month.
While the lawyers focused on the planned parenthood, the legislation did not mention them by name. Instead, refunds for organizations that are mainly involved in family planning services – to which things such as contraception, abortion and pregnancy tests generally include – and received more than 800,000 US dollars from Medicaid in 2023.
The parliamentary parliamentarian of the US Senate declined an effort from 2017 to remove the planned parenthood because it was written in order to exclude all other providers by excluding payments to groups that received more than $ 350 million a year in Medicaid funds. In its legal challenge, the non-profit Maine organization claims that the threshold was reduced to $ 800,000 this time to ensure that the planned parenthood is not the only affected unit.
It is the only other organization that reports publicly to say that your financing is also at risk.
The Federal Law already prohibits tax money from covering most abortions. Instead, the money in question includes other health services such as cancer provision and tests as well as the treatment of sexually transmitted infections.
Proponents of this law in the case say that abortion providers exploit Medicaid money for other services to subsidize abortion.
“It has never been the planned parenthood,” said autumn Christensen, Vice President of Public Order for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “It is about a large abortion business or a network that does abortions. Taxpayers should never be forced to support an industry that benefits from the end of human life.”
The Associated Press has visited a comment from the US Ministry of Health and Human Services, which is mentioned in the lawsuit.
Family planning in Maine goes beyond abortion
Maine Family Planning operates 18 clinics across the state.
In 2024, around 7,200 family planning patients, including 645, received abortions. The services include pregnancy tests, contraception, family planning advice, breast investigations, cancer examinations and treatment sexually transferable infections.
Some of the websites also offer primary care services in which there are around 600 patients. There are around 800 patients with gender -specific nursing patients and around 200 who exploit their mobile clinic for promotion, said George Hill, President and CEO of the organization.
Hill said that family planning in Maine is the only place for about two thirds of his patients where you will receive medical care in a typical year.
About half of the patients who do not strive for abortions are enrolled in Medicaid, and the clinics receive around $ 1.9 million a year in reimbursements, which makes up for around a quarter of the organization’s budget.
“It is a difficult state to consider and now we are standing in front of the,” said Hill. In her complaint, the group states that it has enough reserves to continue to see Medicaid without refund until October.
Finding health care can be a struggle in this rural state
Family planning in Maine says that she would be more complicated than just finding another provider if she had to reject patients. There are not enough in rural areas, the group states – and many do not accept Medicaid.
A patient, Ashley Smith, said she started going to Maine’s family planning about five years ago when she could not find any other health care that she could afford. Although she is not inscribed in Medicaid, she fears that clinics could be closed due to cuts.
“I am so worried that I don’t know what I will do or whether I can see another provider when my clinic closes,” said Smith.
Family planning in Maine also supports the supply in more than 40 other health facilities. Apart from the Planned Parenthood locations that receive money from Maine’s family planning, these other providers do not lose their Medicaid refunds.
Hill, however, said that the loss of Medicaid Financing for Family Planning in Maine would mean that the group would have sent less partners.
Say the Maine clinics
In its legal registration, the Center for Productive Rights, which represents in the challenge in family planning in Maine, says that the discovery does not refuse the same protection according to the law, since it does not disclose the funds, organizations that offer similar services.
“The administration would prefer to overthrow a nationwide security network than to have a patient preserving a cancer screening in a facility that also offers abortion care,” said Meetra Mehdizadeh, a Center for Rechts for reproductive rights.
The planned parenting already sued and won a judge who prevented the limit of Medicaid payments – at least until July 21, while a court takes this case into account.
Planned Parenthood has warned that the law 200 of its partners could be exposed to around 600 clinics in the United States.
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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
