The Island provider of abortions and other comprehensive healthcare services could be losing a significant amount of funding because of federal legislation aimed at reducing Medicaid spending — a potential loss of $1.8 million annually through healthcare reimbursements.
The nonprofit health provider, Health Imperatives — which has a location in Vineyard Haven and provides healthcare to locals with or without insurance — learned on Friday that it won’t be receiving Medicaid payouts, effective immediately, because of federal cuts associated with the bill.
The chief executive officer of Health Imperatives, Julie Kehoe, said the Medicaid coverage stipend is equivalent to $120,000 a month — and said that unless the state intervenes, they may have to make some difficult decisions down the road.
“The people on-Island will be immediately affected by this,” Kehoe said.
Health Imperatives and Maine Family Planning are the only two healthcare providers in the country besides Planned Parenthood that are being defunded through the “One Big Beautiful” tax bill. The newly signed law prevents providers that billed in excess of $800,000 in 2023 from Medicaid for any services, even outside of abortions. Although Medicaid has never covered abortion care, many other services the organizations offer have been eligible, such as annual exams and cancer screenings.
The clinic on the Island that’s operated by Health Imperatives provides (WIC) women, infants, and children nutrition assistance, rape crisis counseling, and sex trafficking and domestic violence shelters, and reaches families, immigrants, and LGBTQIA+ youth and adults Island-wide. While abortions are a part of the organization’s services, representatives said their programming is more comprehensive, and they didn’t think they’d be grouped in with Planned Parenthood for that reason.
“While sexual and reproductive health care is our largest program, it is only 40 percent of what we do,” Kehoe said. “So the way we looked at it, [the cuts] shouldn’t apply to us. And that’s what the state thought at first, until the government responded and mentioned us.”
Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit in July, followed by a coalition of 23 Democratic-led states through their attorneys general — led by Andrea Joy Campbell in Massachusetts — after the “One Big Beautiful Bill” was signed into law by President Donald J. Trump on July 4, cutting funding for sexual and reproductive health services. While the lawsuits are still ongoing, the implications for the institutions that provide this healthcare on the Island may be immediate.
“By illegally targeting Planned Parenthood, this provision of the budget bill would threaten millions of Americans’ access to essential healthcare like cancer screenings and pregnancy care,” Campbell said in a press release about the lawsuit. “I will continue to champion reproductive justice and fight back against actions that harm the health and well-being of our residents.”
Kehoe said they’ll be diversifying their funding as a result of these cuts, and hope the state will intervene. If not, she said they could garner a nearly $500,000 gap in funding over the next four months. But she said services will continue nonetheless, and there will be no reprieve of care.
“We have always prioritized providing access to the highest quality services for people regardless of their ability to pay or their insurance status. And we’re going to continue to do that. It doesn’t matter if we can’t bill Medicaid and someone has Medicaid. We want everyone to know that right now nothing is changing.”
Check with the Gates Foundation. They have promised a couple of billion for women’s reproductive healthcare.