Yamhill County is known for its wine country and pinot noir that sells for $50 a bottle.
But in Sheridan, a small town in the county’s western reaches, plenty of people are struggling to pay for the basics.
Every other Tuesday, people line up in their cars on Bridge Street as volunteers with the Grand Sheramina Food Bank pass out boxes packed with toasted oats cereal, fresh fruit and potatoes.
On the Tuesday before the Fourth of July, in far away Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump’s big domestic policy bill had just passed the U.S. Senate, on its way to becoming law.
Kaylee, 72, sat waiting in the line for food as she listened to Garth Brooks sing “Mr. Right” on her car radio.
The thought of losing her Oregon Health Plan coverage or food stamps because of the federal bill is scary, said Kaylee, who declined to give her last name. But, she said, it’s necessary for the president to reduce federal spending. We have to lose to get back on track, she said.
“We just have to. We’ve been so spoiled by Biden that we have to lose,” Kaylee said before thanking the volunteers and leaving with her food.
The bill the president signed into law July 4 will cost Oregon billions in lost federal funding, and will cost some Oregonians their benefits. One area that will be hit is the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that helps families afford groceries.
In the near term, the bill tweaks eligibility rules to require more people to work or volunteer 80 hours a month to keep getting food aid. And in the long term, the bill could cut more than $400 million annually in federal funding from Oregon’s SNAP program, state offices estimate.
Judy Adams, 78, runs the Grand Sheramina Food Bank. The bill will make a hard situation worse, she said. Cuts to SNAP would mean more people will need the food boxes she’s handing out, but Adams has less to dole out than she used to.
“I don’t know what they’ll do,” she said. “I guess we’ll all beg together.”
Other cuts could be coming to Sheridan, too.
To help pay for an extension of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and some additional tax cuts, the bill puts restrictions on state and federal funding for Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, starting in 2028.
In Oregon, those restrictions could cut almost $12 billion in funding for Medicaid over the next decade, according to the state health authority.
Cliff Bentz, the lone Republican in Oregon’s congressional delegation, voted for the bill and serves on a U.S. House subcommittee that worked to craft the Medicaid cuts.
In a written statement the day after the bill passed, Bentz said it will “protect America’s credit, drive the economy to new heights, and begin the long and difficult road toward reducing dependence on government.”
The bill’s critics, like the Oregon Hospital Association, have said the cuts won’t just affect the 1 in 3 Oregonians on Medicaid. They will put hospitals and primary care clinics at risk of closure, especially in rural areas.
And in many rural parts of the state, finding a doctor is already hard.
Just over a year ago, Sheridan’s only medical clinic closed. Adventist Health Tillamook, which ran the clinic, said it had gotten too hard to recruit doctors to work in rural parts of the state. The company closed clinics in Welches and Lincoln City, too.
In Sheridan, Virginia Garcia Medical Center stepped in and bought the clinic. The nonprofit provides medical and dental care to people regardless of a person’s ability to pay. Their clinics serve about 50,000 patients in Washington and Yamhill counties.
Jerrod Sherwood, Virginia Garcia’s facilities director, lives in Sheridan. He is elated about the clinic reopening and has already begun work replacing the roof. Sherwood is also making it ADA-accessible and remodeling the space inside to make room for a dental office, a pharmacy and four doctors’ offices.
The federal bill isn’t far from his mind as he works to reopen the clinic.
“It’s taking food off the table and denying people coverage. I think it’s unconscionable,” Sherwood said.
The biggest cuts may be years away, but Virginia Garcia CEO Gil Muñoz said the bill has already cast a cloud of uncertainty over their work.
“Medicaid really provides about 60% of our revenue for our operations,” he said. “Even dialing that back 10, 15%, that’s a big hit.”
One of the first parts of the bill that will go into effect is a work requirement for adults age 19-64. Several groups will be able to qualify for an exemption, including people with some disabilities and parents with children 13 and younger.
Oregon is estimating up to 200,000 people could lose coverage because of the work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks for single adults whose income is at the upper limit to qualify for Medicaid.
Muñoz said the work requirement set back a 30-year effort in Oregon to drive down the state’s uninsured rate, which is now well below the national average.
When people lose Medicaid, they’ll likely switch to paying out of pocket, according to Muñoz. Virginia Garcia doesn’t turn anyone away for not having insurance.
“Maybe we’ll get $15 for an appointment, but that’s not something you can really pay your staff with,” he said.
Virginia Garcia is what’s known as a Federally Qualified Health Center, a special designation for community clinics that serve anyone who walks through their doors.
After Virginia Garcia bought the Sheridan clinic, it applied for a special federal grant that helps community clinics open in underserved areas.
They were hoping to get $650,000. Instead, Muñoz said, they were told the program is on pause.
The bill did open the door for future grants that in theory could help keep the clinic in Sheridan open. In response to concerns that the $ 1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid could topple rural providers, the senate added a $50 billion rural assistance fund to the bill.
Oregon will likely qualify for at least $100 million in aid a year, and some could go to community clinics like Virginia Garcia.
With a doctor committed and the remodeling work almost done, the Sheridan clinic will still open in September, but its future is much less certain.
It’s not hard to find people who could rely on the Virginia Garcia clinic for years to come if it can keep its doors open.
At the food bank across town, 73-year-old Debbie DeMarco picked up a box of cereal and canned food. She said she has chronic conditions from polio, but hasn’t been to the doctor in 12 years because of the copays and deductibles.
“Cannot afford it. No way,” she said. “I choose to be healthy.”
DeMarco hadn’t heard about the new clinic, but said she might see a doctor, if it was totally free.
DeMarco had heard about the Republican bill that’s cutting Medicaid and food stamps, however. She wondered what was going to happen to her Meals on Wheels deliveries.
“It really is terrifying,” she said. “I can’t stress that enough.”
Because unlike the doctor’s office, food is something she can’t just go without.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.