A bipartisan coalition of 100 Maine lawmakers is calling on Gov. Janet Mills and the state health and human services department to divert millions to Penobscot Community Health Care, which urgently needs millions to avoid drastically cutting services or declaring bankruptcy.
Thirty-three state senators — nearly the entire chamber — and 67 state representatives, including the majority and minority leaders of each chamber, signed a Tuesday letter asking Mills and DHHS Commissioner Sara Gagne-Holmes to infuse between $3 and $6 million in rural health transformation program funds to the provider.
The funding could help keep afloat a healthcare provider that is considered a safety net for low-income Mainers amid a shortage of primary care physicians and a homelessness crisis in Bangor. Losing Penobscot Community Health Care’s services would further strain a healthcare system where it is already nearly impossible to find a primary care doctor.
“Without this bridge, PCHC faces the very real possibility of major disruptions to services, layoffs, and clinic closures, and the possibility of an expensive Chapter 11 filing, within the next 30-60 days,” the lawmakers wrote. They noted that for many of the provider’s 50,000 patients, “PCHC is not one option among several; it is the only one within reasonable reach.”
Penobscot Community Health Care is Maine’s largest federally qualified health center, offering healthcare to anyone regardless of health insurance or ability to pay at clinics in Bangor, Brewer, Old Town, Belfast and Jackman. The provider is essential for people on MaineCare.
The healthcare provider thanked the legislators for their support. “PCHC looks forward to working with the administration on how best to structure this investment,” the organization said in a statement to the Bangor Daily News.
“These letters are a powerful bipartisan statement about what matters to the people of Maine,” Lori Dwyer, Penobscot Community Health Care’s president and CEO, said. “Legislators on both sides of the aisle came together because they understand that access to care in rural Maine isn’t a partisan issue — it’s a Maine issue.”
In the letter, the lawmakers outlined the urgent need for funding and the work Penobscot Community Health Care has already done in recent years to cut costs in the face of falling reimbursement rates.
“PCHC has a plan in place, the expert support to execute on it, and the grit to see it through. What it does not have at this moment is the cash to survive the next 3-6 months,” they said.
The lawmakers suggested giving the healthcare system a “small fraction” of the $190 million in rural health transformation funds it received in the first year of the federal program, which was created as part of the Trump administration’s “big beautiful bill.”
But Maine Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said on Wednesday that the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has “indicated” that states cannot use Rural Health Transformation Program funds to bolster operating budgets for services already supported by MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program.
Additionally, those funds have already been allocated, and using them for another purpose “no matter how worthy,” would take them from other Maine providers “and would likely be clawed back by CMS,” she said.
Hammes said PCHC’s reimbursement rate for each “encounter” has gone up by 45% since 2023, and that MaineCare spending on federally qualified health centers, such as PCHC, has increased by 50% in that time.
Janet Mills has asked PCHC leadership to meet with her next week and present its plan to stabilize the organization’s finances, a spokesperson for the governor said Wednesday, adding that she “is committed to working with PCHC as it pursues long-term sustainability, including exploring whether appropriate state funding may be available to support operations until the Legislature reconvenes.”
In another letter sent Tuesday, state Sen. Donna Bailey, D-Saco, and Rep. Kristi Michele Mathieson, D-Kittery, chairs of the Joint Standing Committee on Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services, asked Mills, Gagne-Holmes and Attorney General Aaron Frey to provide up to $5 million in emergency funds to PCHC, including rural health funds, grants, opioid settlement funds or loans from state agencies.
“The committee believes it is critically important that the State do everything possible to maintain the services PCHC provides,” they wrote.
This week’s advocacy follows another letter sent by Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, last week asking the attorney general’s office to dedicate $1 million of the state’s opioid settlement funds to Penobscot Community Health Care.