Gov. LePage’s ability to stand in the way of Medicaid expansion should have ended Nov. 7.
That’s the day nearly 60 percent of Maine voters said clearly that the state should extend health insurance coverage to about 70,000 low-income residents.
The governor vetoed Medicaid expansion five times against the wishes of a bipartisan group of lawmakers making up a majority of the Legislature. He delivered countless campaign speeches, radio show appearances and weekly addresses against expansion, using scare tactics and talking points only remotely connected to the facts.
Yet still an overwhelming number of Mainers voted to provide health insurance to poor residents locked out of the health care system only by a glitch in the Affordable Care Act and the LePage administration’s cruel eligibility guidelines.
When given the chance, Maine voted resoundingly against one of LePage’s chief public policy positions, and it is now the governor’s responsibility to make it work.
Given his history, though, it’s no surprise that the governor once again is putting up roadblocks.
While he said recently that he was “looking forward to expanding Medicaid,” or MaineCare, as it is known here, his actions tell a different story than those words do.
Immediately after the election, he issued a list of demands for funding expansion. On Monday, in advance of an Appropriations Committee meeting Wednesday on the issue, LePage reiterated those demands, which are so limiting that they can have only one purpose – to give legislators no way forward.
The governor says the legislative funding plan must not increase taxes, or use the rainy day fund or other one-time funding mechanisms. Lawmakers must fully fund home- and community-based services for elderly and disabled Mainers, too, and they can’t make any reductions for others already receiving state-funded health benefits.
Amazingly, LePage said lawmakers also must consider that the state may owe more than $60 million following the federal decertification of Riverview Psychiatric Center, an appalling situation that exists only because of the continued and long-term mismanagement of that facility by his administration.
And, the governor said, the Legislature must fund expansion not at the level estimated by the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Program and Review, but according to the higher, questionable figures cooked up by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, whose track record on accurate analysis is far from pristine.
That’s a good argument for implementing expansion through the budget, a more deliberate process that would have been fine with a majority of legislators had LePage not stood in the way again and again.
In any case, the governor simply is not making a good-faith effort to carry out the will of the people. Instead, he is trying to sabotage it. After all, that’s what he has done for the past four years, using specious arguments and power politics to uphold his five vetoes of the popular expansion bills.
But he couldn’t fool Maine voters, who understand exactly what Medicaid expansion means: healthier outcomes and less suffering for tens of thousands of Mainers, not “adults who should be working,” as LePage argues, but mostly working Mainers who earn too little to afford health coverage or doctor visits – less than $22,411 a year for a family of two.
Last month, Mainers made clear what they want. Now it is the governor’s duty to make it happen.
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