Health Page: Medicaid Cuts Could Cause Health Problems, Financial Strain For Many, Warns Outer Cape Health Services CEO

HARWICH PORT – The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” with an estimated $911 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next 10 years, could create one big financial crisis and exacerbate health emergencies for millions of people who rely on community health centers like Outer Cape Health Services.

 “We’re still trying to wrap our heads around what the actual impact will be,” Outer Cape CEO Dr. Damian Archer said Monday. “Federally qualified community health centers have a very specific purpose: to provide care to the communities we serve regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. That is a unique mission that is supported by statute,” he said.

 Under Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act, the federal government provides funding to help health centers that provide comprehensive services on a sliding scale to medically underserved populations like communities with many seasonal workers. Community health centers also rely heavily on Medicaid reimbursement to pay for the care they provide. The Trump administration legislation signed on July 4 tightens eligibility and enrollment to Medicaid, imposing new work requirements for recipients. These and other changes could cause millions of people to lose their health insurance, particularly people who are elderly, disabled or who live in low-income families.

 If people on the Lower Cape lose their ability to access Medicaid or financial help through the Massachusetts Health Connector program, “there will be a higher number of people who are underinsured or uninsured,” Archer said. That will raise the cost of uncompensated care for all health providers, potentially reducing health care access for many.

 That means that fewer people could be accessing preventative care and necessary treatment for chronic conditions, leading to more acute health care problems. Outer Cape Health Services provides primary care to more than 20,000 patients every year from its facilities in Harwich Port, Provincetown and Wellfleet. There is currently a waiting list for new patients, because Outer Cape, like other healthcare providers, struggles to find adequate staffing — a problem compounded by the high cost of living and expensive housing options on the Lower Cape.

 As a community health center, Outer Cape Health Services also links patients to other resources in the community to help with nutritious food and other essentials, and proposed federal cuts to other parts of the social safety net — from the SNAP food assistance program to veterans’ benefits — threaten to compound health and wellness challenges on the Lower Cape, Archer said.

 “People will have less and less support, and that ultimately impacts your health,” he said.

 In honor of Community Health Center Week, Outer Cape Health Services has events this week designed to support its staff members “who’ve been putting in a lot of work to ensure that we are moving through all of these challenges the best way possible,” Archer said. The state league of community health centers has been doing public outreach to share stories about the challenges health centers are facing now, and there is also active lobbying underway to ensure that political leaders know about the threats to the community health center system.

 Should funding cuts materialize, Outer Cape Health Services will need to make some difficult choices, likely to include some service reductions, Archer said. The organization has been doing some community outreach to help identify the most pressing health care needs in the community, where services need to be maintained “in a universe where there’s less funding and less support,” he said.

 “It is really daunting, the possibility of what could be coming our way in the next few years,” Archer said.