Rural protesters urge Senate to kill Trump Medicaid cuts

PORT ANGELES, Wash.—Senior citizens stood near Clallam County’s only full-service public hospital, June 7, holding signs proclaiming “85% of OMC Patients on Medicaid, Medicare” and chanting “No cuts to Medicaid or Medicare.” The vigil, initiated by local members of PSARA (Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action), lined First Street just south of the Olympic Medical Center (OMC), a public hospital that serves 111,000 on the isolated, rural Olympic Peninsula.

In the crowd were two candidates for the OMC Board of Commissioners, constantly struggling with millions of dollars in debt due to the low reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid. Laurie Force, a retired nurse, candidate in the August primary for the OMC Board, was holding a sign, as was her husband, Larry, whose hand-lettered message was “Stop the Steal.” Her campaign slogan is “A Force For OMC.” 

To avert bankruptcy, the OMC commissioners are secretly negotiating with a number of private hospitals, including Providence, a Catholic hospital chain that bans abortions and other reproductive health care. The Board is expected to announce its decision on a possible merger this month.

The vigil was in protest against President Trump’s “big beautiful” budget bill passed by the House and now pending in the U.S. Senate that would inflict $715 billion in cuts to Medicaid and $300 billion in cuts to the SNAP nutrition program to defray the trillion-dollar tax cut for billionaires and millionaires. 

The other candidate for the OMC Board, Dr. Gerry Stephanz, Medical Director of the Olympic Peninsula Community Clinic, pointed out that Trump’s budget bill is a menace to rural hospitals across the nation, including the OMC, which are totally dependent on Medicare and Medicaid payments to stay afloat financially. OMC, he said, should file to be designated a “Rural Health” provider, like the hospital in Port Townsend. If recognized as a rural hospital, OMC would enjoy far higher reimbursement rates for the 85% of its patients now covered by Medicaid and Medicare.

The vigil took place one week after a meeting, also organized by PSARA, at the senior Shipley Center in nearby Sequim. PSARA leaders, Robby Stern and Anne Watanabe urged the crowd to contact U.S. Senators to demand that they vote “no” on this so-called budget “reconciliation” bill that will inflict hundreds of billions in cutbacks to Medicaid, the SNAP food stamp program, and other human needs benefits, while handing trillions in tax cuts to themselves and other billionaires.

Stern said that Trump’s budget bill meant that 13.7 million people would “lose healthcare insurance.”

He cited the disastrous impact the cuts would inflict in Clallam County, where 20,866 children, 38% of youngsters, are protected by Medicaid, and 21%  of those 55 years or older. In neighboring Jefferson County, 7,641 people, over 29% of children and 27% of those 55 years old or older, are enrolled in Medicaid.

Rural hospitals, he said, like the OMC in Port Angeles, face closing or losing their public status, being privatized through merger with private for-profit hospitals like Providence. In the past twenty years, 200 rural hospitals across the nation have been forced to close due to this crisis in rural America. OMC is the only full-service hospital in an isolated region, a two-hour drive from Silverdale or Tacoma, and a long ferry ride from Seattle. Enactment of the Trump-MAGA budget bill will be a death sentence for tens of thousands of low-income people, children, immigrant and native-born alike, Stern charged.

Laurie Force, a retired nurse practitioner who is a candidate for the OMC Executive Board in the August primary election, was at the vigil. 

Both Stern and Watanabe addressed the issue of defending traditional Medicare from privatization by so-called “Medicare Advantage” or MA. Stern described struggles by PSARA member, Richard Timmins of Whidbey Island, forced to undergo chemo and radiation treatment for skin cancer because his MA provider refused to approve in time treatment by a dermatologist despite his physician’s recommendation. By the time the MA provider reversed course, the tumor had metastasized into cancer. Stern told of his own family forced to file lawsuits against an MA provider to win long-term care for a grandmother in a nursing home.

United Healthcare and other private insurers are paid a per-patient capitation fee. They seek to inflate their profits through massive overcharges, false claims, and “upcoding,” in which patients are over-diagnosed to allow the MA providers to file additional claims with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The total of false claims and overcharges by MA is an estimated $140 billion annually. Much of this corruption has been exposed by the Inspector General of the Center for Medicare Services itself. Elon Musk and his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) program have fired these inspectors en masse in the name of eliminating “waste and fraud.”

Watnanabe said PSARA seeks to preserve Medicare against privatization by “leveling the playing field,” enacting reforms that allow traditional Medicare to offer the same extra benefits offered by MA, like dental, vision, and hearing, capping at $1,000 annually the copays and deductibles charged to all Medicare patients. PSARA also supports “Medicare For All.” 

Ellen Menshew, a member of PSARA and also Chair of the Clallam County Democratic Party (CCD), and Lisa Dekker, an Outreach Vice President of PSARA from Clallam County, introduced the guest speakers from Seattle. Dekker told the crowd that PSARA members and other volunteers are standing in front of the Federal Building in Port Angeles every Friday at 1 p.m. to protest the Trump-Musk attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, focused now on demanding that the U.S. Senate reject the MAGA-Trump budget bill.

It was Memorial Day weekend, and many in the crowd came directly from a “Hands Off Our Veterans” protest by hundreds at the main intersection in Sequim denouncing cuts by Trump to the Veterans Administration, and sharp reductions in healthcare and other benefits for war vets. 

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