With today’s narrow passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of H.R. 1, President Donald Trump’s multitrillion-dollar package of tax cuts and spending, the president’s so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill” awaits only his own signature before becoming law. 

Among its many projected impacts — which include adding at least $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next decade — the bill is expected to have a dramatic impact on the nation’s health care. It includes sweeping cuts to Medicaid that are projected to result in 8.7 million people losing Medicaid coverage and 7.6 million people losing insurance altogether over 10 years, according to initial estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The Outpost reached out to several local organizations and health care professionals in hopes of getting a better understanding of what the local impacts could be. We spoke with Tory Starr, the chief executive officer of Open Door Community Health Centers, and received statements from Connie Beck, director of the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, as well as Providence Health & Services, Partnership HealthPlan and the County Welfare Directors Association.

Requests for comment from SoHum Health, Mad River Community Hospital and the K’ima:w Medical Center were not returned by the time of this post’s publication.

Tory Starr of Open Door Community Health Centers

Starr was the only person we were able to speak with at length. He said that with approximately one third of all Californians covered by Medi-Cal (the state’s version of Medicaid), the impacts across the state will be significant.

Open Door is the largest provider of obstetrics and primary care in both Humboldt and Del Norte counties, and Starr said that a little over half of the organization’s patients are on Medi-Cal. 

“Because we’re in a rural area, many other practices in the community over time have closed,” he said. “There’s not many of us left doing this work.”

While Starr believes the health care consequences of Trump’s bill will be profoundly negative, he described the contents of the legislation as “fairly ingenious.” 

“Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare [the Affordable Care Act] the first time Trump was in office; this time they got smarter,” Starr said. “Now they’re just defunding it. So they learned their lesson, and they’ve done a really good job because they say they’re not cutting any benefits but what they’re doing is making it really hard for people to access them. It’s pretty ingenious and disturbing.”

By way of example, Starr said the bill will require people to apply for Medi-Cal twice per year instead of just once — “and if you’ve ever filled out any government forms, you know it’s not easy,” he said. 

Those applications will have to be processed by counties and then sent on to the state for approval — “so you just doubled the workload for the county and state during times of shrinking budgets,” Starr explained.

Beck confirmed this in her statement while also noting the additional requirements people will face to qualify for Medi-Cal coverage, including stricter work requirements and income eligibility:

Connie Beck | File photo.

This is a tremendous cost-shift to states and counties. We’re going to have to stand up whole new systems to verify that people are working at least 80 hours a month to keep their Medi-Cal coverage, as well as verify income eligibility every six months, instead of annually.

These changes will start January 2027. Just under a year and half from now, and there’s only $100 million in grants to states included in the bill for this new workload. To give you some perspective, Georgia spent $50 million on upgrading their IT systems to implement their Medicaid work requirements. So, this is a big hole in the state budget.

Locally, 58,000 people are enrolled in Medi-Cal and about 24,000 will be subject to these new requirements.

The bill also increases the state and county share of administrative costs for CalFresh, which will have a significant impact on state and county budgets. More people will be subject to work requirements for CalFresh benefits too. This will also increase county workload and costs.

I’m afraid that a lot of Humboldt County residents are going to lose Medi-Cal and CalFresh benefits. Not because they’re not working — most are — but because the rules for documenting that work or getting an exemption will be hard to follow. This is a big step backward for our organization’s mission to reduce poverty.

Starr said Republicans justified the stricter eligibility and income rules through oft-repeated messaging about “fraud, waste and abuse,” which he described as misleading but “very politically astute.”

“The vast majority of folks who are served by Open Door and on Medi-Cal are working already, so it’s disingenuous to suggest that all these people are fraudulently freeloading on Medi-Cal or Medicaid,” Starr said. “Other folks have bona fide disabilities or they’re moms with kids. [Politicians] say [such people] won’t get kick off, but they will make them jump through more hoops to stay on, which will result in many not meeting deadlines. They [the politicians] know that’s a way to reduce cost by creating barriers to access.”

Any system as large as the U.S. health care industry — estimated at $4.9 trillion in 2023 — will inevitably have examples of waste and abuse, Starr allowed. But he said the biggest examples come not from patients but from large private insurance companies that require prior authorization for coverage of many procedures and make a practice of denying coverage and forcing customers to appeal. 

“That’s waste,” he said. “There’s nothing value-added.”

As for abuse and fraud, it mostly comes from the commercial side of the industry, including medical supply contractors, rather than government programs, Starr said, noting that Medicaid only uses three cents of every dollar on administrative costs while private insurers spend more like 10 to 20 cents per dollar. 

“It costs a lot to deny and slow down claims and get prior authorization,” he said.

Like Beck, Starr pointed to the fact that most of the changes enacted by this bill won’t take full effect until late 2026 or later, which is after next year’s mid-term elections. He’s worried that voters’ attention spans won’t last long enough to hold the Legislature responsible for the impacts of this bill, especially since the most severe consequences won’t be felt for years.

“People forget that it was the Affordable Care Act that standardized insurance policies and said that if you want to sell them in the United States … you can’t kick people off or not give them insurance if they have preexisting condition, and you can’t kick kids off until they’re 26,” Starr said.

He believes that Trump’s big bill will take America back to what the country had before the ACA, with potentially millions of people lacking any health care coverage. 

“We’re the richest nation on the planet,” he said. “We can afford to provide health care to our citizens. We’re the only industrialized nation that does not do that.”

As a federally qualified health center, Open Door is required to care for people even if they can’t pay for services, or can only pay a small portion via the clinic’s sliding scale. Starr said administrators are concerned but they’re also working to ensure that their patients retain their insurance coverage if at all possible by communicating with them about when they need to re-apply or submit documentation for working or volunteering.

“It’s a long haul,” he said. “We will need to make sure people understand that. This is just the beginning of a really long journey until we get back to some sense of — I don’t know what to call it anymore — normalcy? It’s hard to say.”

Providence emailed a statement on Wednesday, after the Senate had barely passed the bill but before the House had done so. Here’s that statement:

The Senate’s passage of H.R.1 includes deep and devastating cuts to Medicaid, which would destabilize hospitals and providers across the country and place access to vital health care services at risk.  

If the House passes the bill in its current form, more than 11 million individuals will lose access to health care. Additionally, reducing funding for Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years will impact every patient. These far-reaching funding reductions will limit health services; lead to care delays and longer wait times, especially in emergency departments; and place undue strain on overburdened health care providers. 

Grounded in our Mission, Providence will continue to advocate for the preservation of Medicaid, and we urge lawmakers to recognize the integral role Medicaid plays in maintaining health care access across our communities.

The organization also endorsed this statement from the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which describes the bill as “a moral failure” that will inflict “deep harm on essential community health and social safety-net programs, threatening the survival of rural hospitals and long-term care facilities.”

Meanwhile, the County Welfare Directors Association (CWDA) described Trump’s signature domestic legislative achievement as “an unprecedented assault on millions of Americans.” The organization’s executive director, Carlos Marquez III, released the following statement:

County human services officials who devote their life’s work to keeping vulnerable families and individuals safe, healthy, housed, and fed are dismayed by the passage of H.R.1 and the overnight dismantling of California’s safety net as we know it. The human suffering and societal costs this legislation will wrought are nearly incalculable, except that Congress and the White House had full knowledge of its unconscionable impacts and chose to wage a war on the poor and working poor anyway – over 700,000 low-income Californians may go hungry, up to 3.4 million will now be at risk of losing their healthcare.

Counties will endeavor to continue our role as an indispensable backstop against unmitigated sickness and poverty, to ensure children have the nutrition and healthcare they need to go to school and parents to work, but we cannot weather this deeply uncertain moment alone. We stand ready to work with the Governor and Legislature to deliver on our mission now more than ever.

Lastly, here’s a statement from Partnership HealthPlan of California, the nonprofit that contracts with the state to administer Medi-Cal benefits through local care providers to recipients in two dozen counties, including Humboldt:

Medicaid has been the cornerstone of America’s health care promise — delivering critical services that transform lives and ensure essential health care remains within reach, from rural communities to suburban neighborhoods.

For more than 30 years, Partnership HealthPlan of California has been committed to ensuring access to quality health care for our most vulnerable community members. This week, Congress and the president made $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that will impact our members, along with the entire Medi-Cal program.

In Partnership’s 24 counties, Medicaid is an economic engine, helping to fuel the small business workforce with reliable health coverage, keeping emergency rooms open 24/7, and supporting nurses and doctors who choose to practice throughout our service area.

Our commitment to the members we serve remains unwavering. Partnership’s members can be assured that we are dedicated to finding solutions to maintain and support their health and the providers who care for them.

Our mission to serve California’s safety net population continues, and we will meet this challenge the same way we always have — by working together.

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A new wildfire burning near the Humboldt-Siskiyou County line has burned roughly 17 acres of forest along Yellow Jacket Ridge, prompting evacuations for people living along Salmon River and Sawyers Bar roads, near Forks of Salmon. 

The Jacket Fire ignited just before 9 o’clock this morning. As of Thursday afternoon, the fire is zero percent contained. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Siskiyou County has issued a mandatory evacuation order for SIS-1708 and evacuation warnings for SIS-1707, SIS-1710 and SIS-1709. A detailed, interactive map of the current evacuation warning can be found at this link.

“Resources continue to arrive on the Jacket Fire, which has been mapped at 17 acres with a moderate rate of spread,” according to a Facebook post from the Klamath National Forest. “Air support has been key in reducing fire growth while dozers, hand crews, and engines gain access to the fire. Fire retardant has effectively slowed fire growth.”

Evacuation information and updates can be found on the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office and Klamath National Forest Facebook pages — linked here and here.

Caltrans release: 

Route 36 is now open to one-way traffic east of Swimmer’s Delight near Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. Travelers should be prepared for delays and drive through the slide area with caution. CHP may be present to assist with traffic flow.

Even over the holiday weekend, when no active construction is scheduled, vehicles will be escorted through the area in small groups for safety. Delays will depend on traffic volumes and are difficult to predict, but 30 minutes is a reasonable estimate.

Starting the week of July 7, crews will begin constructing a temporary lane farther from the hillside, along with other stabilization work in the area. During this period, drivers should prepare for longer weekday delays and plan trips accordingly.

WARNING: Graphic image of a severely injured animal below.

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A 59-year-old Salyer resident was hospitalized on Sunday after an encounter with a “severely” injured black bear at Berry Summit on Route 299. 

The man, who has not been publicly identified, struck the 400-pound male bear with his vehicle just before 11 a.m. on Sunday, according to California Highway Patrol (CHP) incident logs. He quickly got out of his vehicle to help the injured animal over the nearby guardrail and was bitten several times.

“After striking the bear and seeing that it was severely injured, the motorist felt bad about it, stopped his vehicle, and got out to see if he could help the bear,” Peter Tira, a public information officer with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), told the Outpost. “Mortally wounded, the bear was struggling to climb over a guardrail on the highway and get back to wild habitat on the other side apparently. The motorist tried to assist by helping the bear over the guard rail and was bitten in the process.”

The bear died shortly thereafter, Tira said.

CHP Sgt. Caleb Carsey told SFGATE‘s Amanda Bartlett that the Humboldt Area CHP office was “flooded with 911 calls” after the incident. Several witnesses looked on as the 59-year-old man approached the bear and was bitten “multiple times in his left forearm,” according to the SFGATE. An off-duty EMT who witnessed the incident responded immediately and applied a tourniquet to the injured man’s arm before calling Trinity Life Support ambulance. 

The man was taken to a local hospital to be treated for his injuries, though his current condition is unknown. The CHP has not yet responded to the Outpost’s request for additional information.

Tira took the opportunity to remind drivers to watch out for animals while traveling the roads this summer and to take extra precautions when driving around dawn and dusk when wildlife is more active.

“Late spring and summer are always a very busy time for bear activity across California [because] it is mating [season] for black bears,” he continued. “If there’s a lesson here, it’s never to handle or approach a wild animal, particularly a wounded wild animal as they feel threatened, obviously, and in fear for their life, and are dangerous and unpredictable in that state.”

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As the Trinidad Rancheria slowly but surely works toward securing a source of water for the multi-story Hyatt hotel it wants to build next to The Heights Casino, the City of Trinidad will take a fresh look at whether or not to upgrade its own municipal water supply from that same source — a mainline extension from the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District (HBMWD).

The Rancheria is currently working on a draft feasibility study analyzing the potential connection to an extended HBMWD mainline. Trinidad residents, meanwhile, have been divided, sometimes bitterly, over the question of whether the city needs a more reliable and voluminous water supply. 

Since the mid-1970s, the city has gotten its water from the Luffenholtz Creek watershed, which at times has been barely sufficient to meet demand. During the drought years of 2018-2021, for example, Trinidad had to implement emergency conservation measures amid a series of water shortages, which were exacerbated by leaks in the city’s aging infrastructure. 

The Rancheria, meanwhile, struggled for years to identify a water supply sufficient to support development, including the 100-room hotel it hopes to build on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. After being rebuffed by the City of Trinidad in 2020, the Rancheria turned to the HBMWD, requesting government-to-government consultation on a mainline extension.

The City of Trinidad was invited to participate in a feasibility study, through which it could explore the possibility of getting its own water through that pipeline. But the prospect proved highly controversial among local residents, with opponents, including Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone, arguing that a pipeline connection would pave the way for future development that could spoil the region’s rural charm.

In 2021, at a meeting where most public commenters voiced opposition to the pipeline, the Trinidad City Council decided not to join that feasibility study, via a 3-2 vote. 

But now, more than four years later, city leaders plan to ask residents to reconsider that decision. Reached by phone on Wednesday, Trinidad City Clerk Gabriel Adams confirmed that the agenda for next Tuesday’s city council meeting will include a discussion item about the pipeline engineering study.

Trinidad residents were recently notified via a message printed on the back of all customers’ water bills:

The Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District has suggested the City of Trinidad join the discussion with urgency as the Trinidad Rancheria’s water service connection project is rapidly moving forward.

The agenda discussion background will touch on the history of  the Trinidad Water System and the Luffenholtz Creek watershed, including a variety of reports and studies analyzing the reliability of the watershed, lessons learned during the 2020 drought, increasing vulnerabilities of small water system operations, the complete drawdown of the Water Fund reserves, and the need for raising rates to match needs of funding the system.

The Council will be asked to provide staff with direction on whether to participate in the engineering study to gain a deeper understanding of the pros and cons of the proposal.

A local community group called the Humboldt Alliance for Responsible Planning (HARP), which has long opposed both the Rancheria’s hotel project and a municipal connection to the HBMWD mainline, recently sent a letter urging neighbors to oppose the proposition. The letter warns that a pipeline connection “would induce substantial growth and development in the greater Trinidad area,” including the hotel project, while potentially increasing costs and creating environmental concerns.

The water district’s new general manager, Michiko Mares, told the Outpost on Thursday that there are still many opportunities for public review and participation. Once the engineering analysis is completed, the HBMWD, as lead agency on the project, would begin environmental design and review, a process that would require approval from the Humboldt Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCo. 

The Trinidad Rancheria’s chief executive officer, Jacque Hostler-Carmesin, said the Rancheria would welcome the city’s participation, if that’s what residents and councilmembers choose to pursue.

“It should be a very interesting conversation,” Hostler-Carmesin said regarding next week’s meeting. “The Rancheria has communicated with the mayor and the city council that we’d be happy to work with them. We believe it’s a great project, and we would welcome working with the City. But it’s definitely up to the City Council and constituents on how they move forward.”

The Trinidad City Council meeting will be held at the Town Hall, 409 Trinity Street, starting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 8. Public comments can be submitted anytime beforehand, in person or electronically by email to cityclerk@trinidad.ca.gov, or at the meeting via Zoom or in person. See here for more details. 

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• Take a Look at the Big Proposed Trinidad Casino Hotel; Concerned Community Members Schedule Meeting to Gin Up Public Comment
• Trinidad Rancheria Will Give a Presentation on Casino Hotel Project at City Council Meeting Tonight
• Coastal Commission Gives Green Light to 100-Room Hotel on Trinidad Rancheria … as Long as the Tribe Can Find a Reliable Water Supply
• City Pumps Brakes on Trinidad Rancheria’s Request for Water; Will Draft Policy Before Continuing Formal Negotiations Over New Hotel Development
• Trinidad Rancheria Asks for Pipeline Extension to Get Water Via Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District
• Trinidad Council Opts Not to Join Feasibility Study for a Pipeline Extension from Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District
• Trinidad Rancheria’s Proposed Hyatt Hotel Project Dealt Setback as Appeals Court Issues Tentative Ruling Finding Insufficient Evidence of Adequate Fire Protection Services
• Appeals Court Rejects Coastal Commission’s Approval of Trinidad Rancheria’s Planned Hyatt Hotel Project

Release from the Office of Congressman Jared Huffman:

Today, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) released the following statement after the House passed the Republican Budget Bill:

“Republicans just rammed through one of the most destructive bills in memory. The Republican Budget Bill is a big betrayal, a full-blown catastrophe for the American people.

This is what it looks like when a government turns its back on the people it’s supposed to serve. Millions of Americans will lose their healthcare and food assistance. Families will pay more on their power bills. Millions of acres of public lands will now be thrown open to reckless mining, logging, and drilling. Meanwhile, communities already reeling from wildfires, floods, and climate disasters will be abandoned, left defenseless as Republicans gut the very programs meant to protect them.

And as Republicans sabotage American clean energy, they are surrendering to China, abandoning our global leadership and sacrificing thousands of American clean energy jobs to our biggest global competitor.

And what’s worse? Republicans are proud of it. They’re celebrating a bill that steals from working families to bankroll billionaire tax breaks and handouts to fossil fuel CEOs.

As America prepares to celebrate Independence Day, Republicans are passing a Declaration of Dependence on costly, planet-wrecking fossil fuels. As families fire up the grills at Fourth of July barbecues tomorrow, the GOP will be lighting a match and torching our clean energy future.

Once again, Republicans and President Trump have made it painfully clear: when forced to choose between their billionaire donors and Americans, they’ll betray and sell us out every time.”

Background

President Trump and House Republicans are committing a staggering betrayal of the American people — gutting environmental protections, massively expanding drilling, mining and logging on our public lands, and torching America’s clean energy future to bankroll corporate polluters and billionaires.

What’s Inside This Scam of a Bill

• Opens the floodgates to reckless drilling and mining across millions of acres of public lands and along America’s coasts, including some of the most culturally and ecologically important places in the country.
  Jacks up Americans’ electricity bills by putting up roadblocks for clean energy projects while lavishing even more giveaways on polluters.
• Supercharges reckless oil, gas, and coal development while gutting safeguards for clean air and water — putting families, especially in frontline and Tribal communities, at greater risk of asthma, cancer, and toxic pollution.
• Reduces forest policy to a reckless logging free-for-all, ignoring science, weakening wildfire prevention, and putting ecosystems and communities at risk.
• Rescinds funding to protect communities from climate disasters, defunding programs that help communities build resilience to floods, fires and other climate-related disasters.

This article was updated on July 3 at 1:05 p.m. to include comments from a 50501 organizer.

A web of overlapping interests, people, and organizations is making it hard to know for sure who will be hosting Independence Day protests outside the Eureka courthouse tomorrow.

A June 29 Reddit post by a 50501 organizer who goes by “R. Chaos” says there isn’t a 50501-affiliated protest scheduled for tomorrow’s Independence Day, but a search on the 50501 website does turn up a result — which, apparently, is an unrelated event called “Free America.” The next official 50501 protest will be July 17.

The post claims it’s not a protest (instead, it’s a “a day of community out reach and events…A day for people to have block parties, banner drops, dance protest and more”), but the 50501 listing says it is, in fact, a demonstration.

“This is a peaceful protest,” the event listing reads. “Bring signs but stay on the sidewalk. Hydrate and wear a hat. Do not engage with counter protesters or hecklers.” Fourteen people have RSVP’d for the event on the website.

Reached by phone, R. Chaos specified that it’s a day focused on mutual aid and community.

“James M.”, the account that posted the Free America event, has not responded to a request for comment.

Further mucking things up are two NextDoor posts from a “Karen Mast” of Sequoia Park in Eureka, who said she would be organizing her own protest from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. outside the courthouse. 

“Any one is welcome to join us; this is just a spur of the moment PROTEST!” Mast said. “IF anyone is telling you otherwise do not listen to them, I will be there, it just takes one person to set an action in motion, one person to start a voice to be heard.”

Mast has not responded to a request for comment. 

R. Chaos also said they were happy to see any protests happening tomorrow and said there was no enmity between them and any other organizers.

“Any rallies happening are amazing,” Chaos said. “No one protest is better than the other. No one protest no more important than the other.”