New analysis by Maine Center for Economic Policy finds Mainers in the state’s most rural towns and legislative districts are among those most affected by the cuts to Medicaid (known as MaineCare in Maine) in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB).
Building on prior county-level analysis, MECEP projected health care losses for each state house and senate district, as well as at the ZIP code level. Because the cuts are a consequence of new work-reporting requirements, the areas hardest hit include the parts of Maine where steady year-round work is hardest to find. In addition, because wages in these areas are lower than the rest of the state, a larger share of the population is enrolled in MaineCare to begin with.
For example, some of the legislative districts where Mainers are most likely to lose their MaineCare are Senate District 6, which covers Downeast Maine, and House District 3, which includes Fort Fairfield and the surrounding towns.
One important exception, however, is Portland, where the labor market’s strength does not do enough to insulate the large number of Portlanders using MaineCare. This is partly because despite meeting the requirements, thousands of Mainers will lose coverage when they’re unable to prove it or to navigate the new layers of red tape. Thus, Portland’s Senate District 28 and House Districts 118 and 119 have the most Medicaid losses of any part of the state.
By contrast, the areas of Maine least at risk from the changes in OBBB are the wealthy Portland suburbs, where employment is readily available, and relatively few people rely on MaineCare. In Senate District 25, which includes Falmouth, Yarmouth, and Cumberland, just under 400 Mainers are expected to lose their health care coverage, compared to almost 1,300 in District 6, and almost 1,600 in neighboring District 28.
It’s worth noting how damaging these cuts will be for some communities. Statewide, around one in three Mainers in the expanded MaineCare program could lose access to health care, but this number ranges from one in four to almost half, depending on which part of the state people live in. And in several communities, more than one in 10 of all adults under age 65 will lose their health care.
See the map below to explore the data by different levels of geography: