Governor LaGree, I mean, LePage.
"44,000 to lose Medicaid coverage in Maine" by Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, February 23, 2013
LEWISTON, Maine — Louis Bourgoin and his wife were told last month they were about to lose thousands of dollars in annual Medicaid benefits starting in March.
“It’s going to hurt,” Bourgoin said, looking across the spartan living room at his wife. “The government doesn’t care. It means we’re just going to not eat very much.”
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Governor Paul LePage, meanwhile, seems an unlikely politician to wield such power. The oldest son of 18 children, he ran away from home at age 11, lived on the streets of this once-thriving mill town, and eventually was elected as a Tea Party-backed candidate in 2010.
Now the paths of Bourgoin and LePage have crossed because the governor is among more than a dozen Republicans rejecting billions of federal dollars in Obamacare funding for Medicaid expansion. LePage is even going further, cutting benefits available before national health reform passed.
The move would make Maine — one of 26 states to sue the Obama administration over the landmark health care law — the only state in New England to turn down federal money to expand Medicaid. By opting out, LePage is leaving more than $3 billion in federal funding on the table over a decade, money that could have gone toward insuring tens of thousands more of the state’s poorest adults.
It is a decision born in the divisive presidential campaign and last year’s Supreme Court case, and fueled by political philosophy, a counterintuitive maneuver that flies in the face of the more familiar pattern — politicians jockeying to bring home as much federal money as they can to their state.
That's how we got into this mess.
Other Republican governors are weighing whether to stick with party rhetoric or look past their disdain for President Obama’s health care overhaul and accept federal money to help insure their states’ neediest residents.
Of the country’s 30 Republican governors, seven recently decided to take the money, 5 are mulling it over, and 18, including LePage, have said no or are leaning that way. All the Democratic governors have decided to expand or are considering expansion.
Related:
"Under pressure from the health care industry and consumer advocates, seven Republican governors are cautiously moving to expand Medicaid, giving an unexpected boost to President Obama’s plan to insure about 30 million more Americans. Hospital associations around the country signed off on Medicaid cuts under the health care law on the assumption that their losses would be more than offset by new paying customers."
You mean patients, right?
“This is where it becomes less about straight budget calculations and more about ideology,” said John Baughman, a politics professor at Bates College in Lewiston. “It’s the classic case of please the base. LePage is using this opportunity to take a stance about the size of government, and it’s become this philosophical showdown.”
LePage has likened Medicaid to welfare and criticized able-bodied adults who receive taxpayer funded health care. His spokeswoman said he would not be interviewed. But LePage has defended his decision.
In a Jan. 28 letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services, he argued that Maine’s previous Medicaid expansion prompted people to “drop their private insurance in favor of free coverage at the expense of Maine taxpayers,” leading to an “addictive-like dependence on federal dollars.” The state’s credit outlook was downgraded recently in part because of the added burden of its Medicaid costs....
That's important because now we are moving into the realm of Wall Street.
Seven Republican governors who once railed against Obamacare surprised fellow conservatives by saying recently they now intend to expand Medicaid, citing the needs of their states’ uninsured population, the money saved by taking federal dollars, and the increased health care jobs.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, a former hospital executive and one of health reform’s most vocal critics whose state lead the Supreme Court battle against the Obama law, announced Wednesday he was bucking Republican orthodoxy and accepting federal dollars to cover the entire cost of the expansion for three years.
Ohio Governor John Kasich and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said earlier this month that they, too, would expand Medicaid to cover adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, as long as the federal government kept its end of the bargain. The governors of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Dakota also plan to expand.
Medicaid is a public health insurance program for more than 60 million low-income Americans and those with disabilities. The program is run by states, which split the costs with the federal government. It encompasses the third largest domestic program in the federal budget, after Social Security and Medicare, and accounts for 8 percent of the budget.
Yeah, this government is taking care of us all real good, yup.
In Maine, 27 percent of residents are enrolled in Medicaid compared with the national average of 20 percent. The Maine figure is high partly because Maine is a poor state — with a median household income under $48,000 — dominated by low-wage industries of tourism, fishing, and lumber....
The real problem.
The newly elected Democratic majority in the Maine Legislature is also scrambling to craft an alternate budget plan and push for Medicaid expansion, but they do not have the numbers to override a LePage veto.
Critics said LePage’s policy hurts the most vulnerable Mainers....
LePage does have the backing of a number of constituents as well as conservative groups. William Gyorfi, a 65-year-old regular at the Governor’s Diner in Lewiston, supports LePage’s decision to cut back the Medicaid rolls. People need to take more responsibility with their finances because Maine has too many people depending upon government handouts, he said.
“This state has become a welfare state, and Medicaid is part of the problem,” said Gyorfi, a sales associate in the sporting goods department at Kmart. “You have those people who rely on Medicaid for a long time and they become addicted to it. They need to be weaned off the system.”
I say that about banks, war-profiteers, and corporations.
Joel Allumbaugh, director of the Center for Health Reform Initiatives at the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative research organization, agreed, saying, “When you create these avenues for people to have free health care, where is the incentive to go out and advance yourself through your own initiative?”
Every man for himself, huh?
Some who would be most directly affected by the changes rejected suggestions that they don’t deserve the benefits.
“People don’t wake up and choose to be poor,” said Ramon Badillo Perez, a 35-year-old father of four who relies on Medicaid for the knee and foot problems he has developed from his 2-mile walk each day to his $10.80-an-hour job managing the cafeteria at Sam’s Club in Augusta....
Yeah, I somehow just lucked into it.
Donna Garnett, a 45-year-old living in a Portland shelter for homeless women, is among 10,000 adults without dependent children who are scheduled to be dropped next year. Her last job was as a gas station attendant in 2007, but she can no longer work because of a slew of health problems that require her to take 18 medications each day.
Wow, the pharmaceuticals mu$t be cleaning up.
Garnett lives off $227 a month from her father’s life insurance. Her medications cost her $30 a month, but without Medicaid, the price will skyrocket to more than $815 a month for pills to control her asthma, diabetes, thyroid, back pain, and depression....
Jennifer Webb, a 35-year-old mother of three who is at risk of losing her Medicaid benefits in March, just had ankle surgery and will need physical therapy when she is able to walk again in four weeks. By then, she does not expect to have coverage.
Her husband, a former Army sergeant, has traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of two tours in Iraq. He had a job installing metal roofing in hopes of building enough savings to buy the home in Pittston the family is now renting, but he was laid off last week.
In this time of recovery? Yer kidding?
She said she understands the Tea Party’s emphasis on self-reliance.
“My husband’s one of those people. He’s an extremely conservative Republican who comes from a hard-working family,” Webb said. “We were raised to stand up on our own and do what you have to do to survive, which we’re trying to do.”
The other day, a telemarketer for a private insurance company called. When Webb explained her family’s financial circumstances and asked about the cost of various plans, the saleswoman hung up.
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Related: Chamber of Commerce endorses Medicaid expansion
A wrong turn in Maine
He did a uie.
Governor signals Maine could allow expanded Medicaid
"GOP governors up for reelection turn pragmatic; Shifts evident on health care, immigration" by Ken Thomas | Associated Press, February 25, 2013
WASHINGTON — Many Republican governors who worked to thwart much of President Obama’s first-term agenda are shifting gears and softening their rhetoric now that his run was extended for four more years and they’re facing their own reelection.
These state leaders are offering greater cooperation on health care and skipping the tough talk on immigration, taking a cue from voters who in November’s election expressed their opposition to partisan gridlock in Washington.
????? We went with the status quo, or so we were told.
For many governors, the new approach reflects not just the specific needs of their states but also the realities of the political calendar: Nearly two dozen GOP governors elected in 2009 and 2010 could face the voters again.
Stop playing politics with my health.
‘‘People may agree or disagree with my position on this social issue or that social issue, but as long as I’m not rubbing it in their face all the time and instead talking about jobs and balancing the budget in a way that’s relevant to their lives, that’s where the real focal point is,’’ said Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin in an interview during the weekend’s National Governors Association meeting.
Walker, who survived a high-profile union-led recall challenge last year, said his marching orders are clear....
Came from the Koch brothers.
Related: Wisconsin Recall Recall
He won, huh?
The shift is most pronounced on health care, where seven states led by Republican governors are pushing to expand their Medicaid program under Obama’s health care law. Such a move once was considered anathema in the party....
Another case study can be found in Arizona, where Governor Jan Brewer was labeled a conservative firebrand in 2010 for supporting her state’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Now, halfway through her first term, she’s softened her tone on immigration as Obama and Congress pursue a comprehensive overhaul....
Just when you need partisanship.... !!!
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Not so fast up in Maine:
"Governor LePage of Maine vows vetoes over Medicaid debt" by Glenn Adams | Associated Press, March 02, 2013
AUGUSTA, Maine — The Republican governor has advanced a plan to settle the debt to hospitals for past Medicaid services, with income from future liquor sales. Maine’s 10-year private contract for liquor sales, which expires in mid-2014, has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, Governor Paul LePage says. His plan to restructure the liquor sale contract would bring new revenue to the state as it comes in, he says.
LePage’s plan would raise $186 million for the hospital debt dating to 2009, which would trigger $298 million in federal funding to complete the repayment. He envisions covering the debt right off with money from bonds, which would be paid off with the future liquor revenues.
Looks like robbing Peter to pay Paul, but....
‘‘I am tired of playing the game of politics at the expense of Maine people. Now somebody’s got to step up and do something, and the price of admission right now is you pay the hospitals, and we’ll sit down and go to work on everything else,’’ LePage said on radio station WVOM Radio’s morning call-in program, the George Hale-Ric Tyler program.
I'm tired of writing about it.
The governor stressed that he will not just hold off on signing legislation, but also will veto, even if he introduced it, any bill until legislation to address the hospital debt is passed. He maintains it represents $700 million in jobs and other spinoff benefits to the state’s economy.
Democrats, who have acknowledged the hospital debt, denounced LePage’s comments and those of legislative leaders who have said that a state government shutdown is possible if state fiscal issues can’t be settled.
‘‘This is not a dictatorship,’’ said assistant Senate majority leader Troy Jackson of Allagash. ‘‘I’m not going to be threatened by this.’’
Senate majority leader Seth Goodall, Democrat of Richmond, said LePage’s threat ‘‘is not governing. . . . It is the type of political gamesmanship that doesn’t belong here in Maine. I suspect the people of Maine want leaders, not schoolyard bullies. We have serious challenges facing our economy and we should be focused on finding solutions, not making threats.’’
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