Walkersville resident Marlene Eyler, 74, works as a host at a restaurant and cares for her 20-year-old grandson who lives with her. And now she has to add the chore of finding a new Medicare insurance plan to her challenges.

Eyler, who learned recently that she will lose her Medicare Advantage plan with Aetna, is one of thousands of Maryland seniors expected to receive notice this month that their supplemental Medicare plans will no longer be available next year, sparking frustration, fear and confusion.

“I’m very happy with Aetna, I haven’t had any issues with them,” Eyler said. “I’m just frustrated with the state of Maryland that they can’t give the older people better insurance.”

Insurance carriers say that Maryland’s unique hospital system is costly for them to do business in, and several are reducing their coverage in the state or pulling out of counties entirely. But that leaves residents like Eyler forced to navigate finding a new health care plan for next year.

“I’m taking care of him,” she said of her grandson, “plus having to worry about all this insurance stuff. And I have to work because I can’t pay the bills without working.”

Dean Slaughter, a 70-year-old Annapolis resident, is tired of having to change Medicare Advantage plans year after year. He recently got a letter from Aetna as well, telling him that his plan will no longer be available in 2026.

“Now we get to sit down and do the dog-and-pony show – see what’s out there, which is not much to offer. The insurance companies are leaving the state of Maryland,” Slaughter said.

Industry experts say as many as 100,000 Medicare recipients in Maryland, like Slaughter and Eyler, will have to scramble to find a new health care plan by the end of the year or risk losing coverage at an age where many require costly medical care.

About a quarter of Maryland Medicare recipients use a supplemental program called Medicare Advantage that helps retirees use a private insurer for additional health coverage such as vision, dental and transportation assistance that the standard Medicare plans may not offer.

But there’s been a long-running problem that’s coming to a head: State officials and people in the health care industry say the Medicare Advantage market in Maryland is more expensive than in most other states because of Maryland’s unique hospital payment system.

In recent years, the state has offered insurers a grant to help cover some of their costs and encourage them to keep offering the coverage in the state. That grant is going away, however, and some insurance companies have shrunk their presence in the state as a result.

A spokesperson for Humana said that the insurance company will no longer offer one of its Medicare Advantage plans in five major Maryland jurisdictions.

“Humana has exited one Medicare Advantage plan in Maryland for next year,” according to the statement. “Beginning Jan. 1, 2026 … Humana Gold Plus SNP (HMO DSNP), will no longer be available in the following counties: Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford, Howard and Baltimore City.”

Humana says that those affected by the termination will maintain their current coverage through Dec. 31, 2025, but they will need to find new coverage during the Medicare Annual Election Period, which runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7, if they want coverage next year.

Aetna shrunk its Medicare Advantage coverage to just three counties next year.

“Each year, we assess our ability to meet the health care needs of our members and adjust our plans to ensure they can deliver an excellent and sustainable member experience,” a spokesperson for Aetna said in a written statement. “In 2026, in Maryland, we will offer Medicare Advantage in the following counties: Frederick, Harford and Montgomery.”

Part of the issue comes from Maryland’s unique Total Cost of Care hospital payment model, in which a state board called the Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) sets hospital rates. Under the current system, insurance carriers pay higher hospital rates than in other states and get reimbursed by the federal government for Medicare Advantage services at lower rates than elsewhere. Meanwhile, insurance carriers are unable to negotiate hospital rates under their plans.

As a result, it’s more expensive to use Medicare Advantage in Maryland than in other states, and Maryland seniors aren’t getting the same quality of benefits, a spokesperson for CareFirst said in a recent statement.

Insurers reducing their footprint in the state leaves residents like Jie Shen, a 68-year-old living in Cockeysville, having to look for a new plan. That often means finding new doctors and hospitals for health care services.

“This is getting very frustrating,” Shen said. “I just want to stay on one plan at this point. I don’t know which one to choose.”

While there is time to search for a new plan, Medicare Advantage recipients note that the options available in Maryland are dwindling as carriers pull out of the state.

“It’s a hassle,” Slaughter said. “All of a sudden, you’re working with people who don’t even know you, and it’s not the way I want it … I feel like I am a number, and a cattle in line instead of a person, and it’s degrading.”

Even those who will still have their plans in 2026 are worried about what may come down the pipeline later.

Sharon Vickers, 78-year-old resident of Pasadena, was relieved to hear that her Medicare Advantage plan with CareFirst will continue into next year.

“I was concerned. Especially since my husband has passed, not having someone to sit and talk about it and discuss it,” she said.

As many Medicare recipients do, she works with an insurance broker to help find appropriate coverage for her needs. The broker informed her that she would be “comfortable this year,” but that he couldn’t “guarantee anything for next year.”

But she feels that the Advantage plans are already too expensive for what they offer and may skip out on coverage entirely.

“I may be looking at one day not being able to afford health care coverage,” Vickers said. “I’ll do what I have to do when the time comes, and that may mean going without health care.”

Meanwhile, the Maryland model is undergoing a major transition this year, as state health officials and federal officials finalize new terms of the States Advancing All-Payer Health Equity Approaches and Development, or AHEAD, model.

Current negotiations appear to prompt the state to offer solutions to the stabilize Medicare Advantage. There may also be significant changes to the state’s Medicare rate-setting authority.

Shen, like other Medicare recipients, hopes something can be done so that insurers will stay in the state.

“I don’t know if the state can help, but that’s what I ask for,” he said. “They should do something.”

By Danielle J. Brown

Maryland officials unveiled a $340 million settlement Thursday and issued a new water quality certification to the Conowingo Dam, clearing the way for dam owner Constellation Energy to seek a new 50-year federal license to operate the hydroelectric facility.

The deal also resolves years of contentious litigation over the nearly century-old dam, which has become an environmental flashpoint in recent years as its overwhelmed reservoir has allowed polluting sediment to overflow into the Susquehanna River.

Particularly during severe storms, water overflowing from the Conowingo reservoir carries nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus downstream, contributing to “dead zones” for underwater life in the Chesapeake Bay and hampering a struggling multistate effort to clean up the bay.

The settlement between Maryland, Constellation and a pair of clean water advocacy groups — Waterkeepers Chesapeake and the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper — includes $87.6 million for pollution reduction measures, including planting of trees and underwater grasses. It also includes more than $60 million to improve fish passage over the dam, control invasive species and create a hatchery for freshwater mussels to be planted in the river; and another $77.8 million to clean up trash and debris rushing down the Susquehanna.

The Conowingo Dam in Maryland is a 550-megawatt hydroelectric power station on the Susquehanna River operated by Constellation Energy.

Constellation will also pay $18.7 million to explore, and possibly begin, dredging at the dam’s reservoir. But any dredging is still a long way off. All parties are waiting for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that will use computer modeling to assess the impacts of dredging on the reservoir and river downstream. Once that study is complete, likely in late 2026 or 2027, the Maryland Department of the Environment will decide how to use dredging payments that Constellation must make annually for 25 years.

Even then, the agency could move toward getting a dredging permit, could call for more studies — including evaluating the potentially lucrative reuse of silt dredged from behind the dam — or could designate Constellation’s dredging payments to other environmental projects if the Corps study indicates dredging is inadvisable.

Robin Broder, executive director of Waterkeepers Chesapeake, said Thursday that she feels confident dredging will happen eventually.

Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Ted Evgeniadis said his team believes dredging is an economic and viable option. Prior estimates, which found that dredging would cost Constellation “hundreds of millions of dollars every year for 50 years,” are no longer accurate, he said.

“Dredging is much different today than it was 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. There are new technologies today, whether it’s a hydraulic dredge or an ejection dredge,” Evgeniadis said. “All of these new things that have come up over the years are going to be looked at.”

A news conference Thursday at the foot of the dam — near where fishermen cast their lines and below scores of circling vultures and waterbirds — featured what one Constellation official said would usuallyt be considered “strange bedfellows”: Maryland state officials, leaders of environmental nonprofits and Constellation Energy CEO Joseph Dominguez.

Dominguez jokingly turned his pocket inside out Thursday, telling the crowd: “Yeah, this is costly for us. And yeah, I don’t have anything but lint left in my pockets on this one.”

“But I’m glad it’s resolved. I’m glad we can get up here and proudly say we’re doing all of this work,” said Dominguez, praising Gov. Wes Moore’s “steady hand” in the negotiations over the dam, which has 11 turbines, and can produce up to 572 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 165,000 homes.

The story goes back to 2018, when Maryland issued a water quality certification to the dam’s previous owner, Exelon. Constellation and its energy generation portfolio split from Exelon in 2022 to became a standalone business.

That certification would have required the company to mitigate the nutrient and sediment overflows, or make compensatory payments to the state that Exelon said could have totaled $172 million a year. That’s because the dam contributes an estimated 6 million pounds of nitrogen and 260,000 pounds of phosphorus to the bay each year, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Exelon challenged Maryland’s certification in court, and eventually the two parties reached a closed-door deal in which Exelon accepted a number of environmental conditions and agreed to pay about $200 million over 5o years toward restoring the Susquehanna and easing fish passage over the dam. In turn, Maryland waived its authority to issue the water quality certification, to the ire of environmental groups.

That’s where a federal court said Maryland went wrong. In December 2022, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the 50-year hydropower  license issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission  because it said Maryland could not waive its authority to issue the certification.

That sent Maryland back to the negotiating table — now with Constellation and the two environmental groups, who had also challenged the original water quality certification as not going far enough to protect the ecosystem. This was happening just as Moore was taking office.

“We inherited a project that was mired in lawsuits, had frustrations on all sides, where the future of the largest source of renewable energy in our state was in question, while environmental impacts were being unchecked,” Moore said. “I had people who said to me — they had a lot of words — but it all could get summed up in basically a few simple sentences: Stay away from the Conowingo Dam, because that problem is just too difficult to solve.”

Moore’s new environment secretary at the time, Serena McIlwain, having just arrived from California’s Department of the Environment, had to quickly get up to speed on the Conowingo Dam, along with the state’s other environmental challenges.

“I was told that, well, everything kind of went wrong with the negotiations before we started. One was, we didn’t have the right people at the table,” McIlwain said. “And I said to my team, make sure the right people — the waterkeepers — are at the table.”

Maryland learned “hard lessons” from the court’s rejection of the previous settlement, said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. This time, the state issued a revised version of the 2018 water quality certification, along with the settlement.

“The Department of the Environment will retain full power to enforce compliance with water quality standards — and that matters,” said Brown, who called the settlement a “historic victory” for Marylanders and the Chesapeake Bay.

Getting to the finish line was challenging. Brown said it took more than 30 mediation sessions. McIlwain said there were times when some of the parties were “ready to walk out the door.” Among the biggest sticking points was the dredging issue, said Adam Ortiz, a deputy secretary at the Maryland Department of the Environment.

“We could have given up months ago. We really could have,” McIlwain said. “But I knew I needed my job, and I said: ‘You guys are going to get back at that table, and I’ll bring more food. I don’t care. We’re going to get it done.’”

Constellation’s Dominguez bemoaned the long road the dam operator had to walk in order to get its critical new license from FERC.

“It shouldn’t have taken us 10 years to sort through all of the issues here, and that’s a bit disappointing,” he said. “But … the resolution to those permitting issues often requires people coming together who have different interests, that sometimes have conflicting interests, and bringing those folks together and making something good happen.”

By Christine Condon

The Spy sits down with Len Foxwell to discuss the release of Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal in Easton on Friday and what comes next for both the pastor and the community.

This video is approximately 10 minutes in length.

Dozens of protesters braved the heat, rain, and traffic on Friday evening to decry the detention of beloved Easton pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal by ICE.

Nearly 100 people of all ages braved stifling heat, speeding cars, and finally a soaking rain shower at the corner of Dover Street and Route 50 on behalf of Daniel Fuentes Espinal, the Easton pastor arrested by ICE earlier this week.

They held homemade placards —  some political, others scriptural, a few downright profane — and chanted slogans as passing cars beeped their approval as a news chopper hovered above.

The winner for best dressed was a woman in full Lady Liberty regalia. Best sign: ICE: Insufferable Cowardly Extremists.

The protesters were happy to talk to The Spy, but few wanted to give their names for self-evident reasons.

One woman decried the bureaucratic process of naturalization as odious and prohibitively expensive for most immigrants, who nonetheless play a critical role in providing services to Talbot like construction, painting, landscaping, and agricultural work.

“This is straight out of the fascist playbook,” said another gentleman, among several men and women in clerical garb. “Arrest the leaders to intimidate and disenfranchise their followers.”

A third woman said “Trump pledged to deport the worst of the worst. This is the polar opposite of that promise. This is not good governance.”

Meanwhile, the 54-year-old Fuentes Espinal was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana northwest of New Orleans, a family member stated publicly, adding that he was initially deprived of his daily medicine, but is receiving it there.

Following the arrest, ICE issued a statement saying, “Fuentes entered the United States on a six-month visa and never left in 24 years. It is a federal crime to overstay the authorized period of time granted under a visitor’s visa.”

Posting on Instagram, the Maryland Legislative Latino Caucus “condemns the unjust detention of Pastor Espinal and reaffirms its commitment to defending immigrant communities. We call for his immediate release and demand immigration enforcement focus on real threats not devoted community leaders. Maryland must stand for safety, dignity, and humanity.”

Maryland Representatives Sarah Elfreth and Glenn Ivey, along with Senator Chris Van Hollen, condemned the arrest, calling Pastor Fuentes Espinal a “beloved pillar” of Easton and accusing the Trump administration of “indiscriminately profiling and targeting individuals based on their skin color.”

 Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal

An Easton minister who was born in Honduras and has lived in the United States for nearly 25 years was detained Monday morning by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal, who has served as the minister of Iglesia del Nazareno Jesús Te Ama church since 2015, was arrested early on July 21 after departing Lowe’s after picking up some construction materials, his daughter told local media. An ICE vehicle followed him to the nearby McDonald’s, and later arrested him on Route 322 after he ate his breakfast.

According to published reports, he was first taken to Salisbury and then transferred to the Baltimore ICE detention center, where he awaits further transfer. The daughter, Clarissa Fuentes Diaz, said Espinal is a father of three with a large extended family, and has no criminal record.  Espinal’s family has tried to obtain citizenship legally for years, but due to backlogs and expenses, Espinal remained undocumented, Diaz told local media.

Matthew R. Peters, executive director of the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center, which provides outreach services to immigrants, said such detentions are not new but appear to be ramping up. The detention of a prominent member of his community has raised the profile of the issue and may point to further detentions in the future.

“This is nothing new for this community,” Peters said. “In this case, people on the outside are feeling injustice. But everyone who is taken causes an impact on their family and friends.”

Since the start of the second Trump administration in January, immigration arrests have doubled in Maryland, according to the Deportation Data Project, an academic research-based initiative to track deportations. More than 600 immigrants with no criminal record have been arrested during that timespan.

Community members have come out in vigorous support for Espinal, with over 10 character letters written on his behalf, including Len Foxwell, a retired state official and communications strategist. Espinal spoke at the July funeral of Foxwell’s son Darren, who died in an auto accident earlier this summer and was a friend of Espinal’s son Daniel.

“If there is anyone who exemplifies the teachings of Christ and the true values of the Christian faith, it is Pastor Espinal,” Foxwell wrote on his Facebook page. “This [arrest] isn’t about securing the southern border, nor is it about making our communities safe. This is a human tragedy that has torn apart a hard-working family led by one who has given so much to others.

Peters said anyone who may be vulnerable to ICE detention should have a plan in place and work to understand the process through trusted resources with accurate information, noting the danger of scammers preying on immigrants worried about potential arrest.

In a major policy announcement aimed at addressing longstanding racial inequities in Maryland, Governor Wes Moore unveiled a series of actions Tuesday at Bethel AME Church in Cambridge. The centerpiece was the formal launch of the state’s Just Communities designation, a framework intended to steer up to $400 million in competitive state investment to communities that have been historically impacted by discriminatory policies.

Speaking before an audience of more than 200 attendees, Governor Moore emphasized the economic and social costs of racial inequality. “We know the racial wealth gap affects all of us. It hurts our economy, restrains job growth, and limits our potential as a state,” he said. “We cannot afford to delay progress—we need action.”

The Just Communities program, signed into law in 2024, uses racial equity and community-based metrics to identify and support areas disproportionately harmed by redlining, urban renewal, environmental injustice, and high incarceration rates. Following a yearlong review by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, 419 of Maryland’s 1,463 census tracts—across 17 counties and Baltimore City—have been formally designated for priority access to funding. These five-year designations take effect July 1, 2025.

“This is a first-of-its-kind designation,” said Housing Secretary Jake Day. “It is a critical step in lifting the barriers that create separate and unequal neighborhoods across our state.”

In tandem with the designation, Governor Moore also announced an expansion of his administration’s clemency actions. An additional 6,938 pardons for low-level cannabis possession convictions have been granted, extending the historic 2024 executive order that cleared more than 175,000 such convictions—the largest in the nation. The pardons will be reflected in criminal background checks, and all records will be removed from public view by January 31, 2026, per the Expungement Reform Act.

The announcement aligns with several other equity-focused initiatives from the Moore-Miller administration, including:

• The launch of a Community Investment Venture Fund for entrepreneurs of color;

• Funding through the UPLIFT initiative to address racial disparities in property appraisals;

• A $4 million expansion of the Roads to Careers program supporting high-skill workforce training;

• Previous investments of over $1.3 billion in Maryland’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities;

• Over $816 million in state procurement awards directed to Black-owned businesses;

• Expanded mortgage access for 1,500 first-time Black homebuyers; and

• The ENOUGH initiative is a state-level plan to end concentrated poverty.

The event took place within blocks of Long Wharf, a former site of the domestic slave trade, and in a church central to the Eastern Shore’s Black heritage. Officials and community leaders reflected on the symbolism of the Juneteenth announcement.

“This designation represents more than funding. It signals that Maryland is serious about repairing the damage of past injustices,” said Jaelon Moaney, Vice Chair of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture. “This is how inclusive governance looks in practice.”

Cambridge Mayor Lajan Cephas and Dorchester County leaders echoed that sentiment, pointing to the ENOUGH initiative and its potential to foster generational change.

Governor Moore concluded the event by reaffirming his administration’s commitment to results-driven policy: “We are going to continue the work of repair with action that delivers results—not just rhetoric.”