Gov. Paul LePage and Republican state lawmakers who voted to remove nearly 30,000 people from Medicaid need a waiver from the federal government to make many of these cuts. The debate over the waiver may sound like inside bureaucratic wrangling, but the consequences will have a real and devastating impact on thousands of Maine seniors, people with disabilities and working families.
A recent column by state Rep. Richard Malaby, R-Hancock, “Which Medicaid waiver do you object to?” (BDN, Sept. 11), argues that the state needs to make these cuts so we can help the “truly needy.” But this rhetoric does not match reality. The thousands of people they would like to take health care away from are truly needy. They include working parents, who are trying to make ends meet.
They include 19- and 20-year-olds with serious illnesses such as diabetes, cancer or severe mental health issues. They include seniors and people with disabilities who will have to choose between paying for their medicine and buying groceries.
Last year, Republicans forced through these health care cuts in a partisan budget after passing a huge tax cut for the rich. Seniors, people with disabilities and many Maine families will be asked to shoulder the burden so more money can go to people who don’t need it.
In times like these millionaires should be giving to charity, not getting it.
The funds used for the tax cut could have helped fund the cost of the housing and care for people with severe developmental disabilities whom Malaby is concerned about. The families of those individuals, in many cases, will have to quit their jobs to care for them.
The truth is Democrats and Republicans agree that our health care system needs to be more affordable. We just have starkly different solutions for how to lower those costs. Taking health care away from Mainers in need is not reforming the system — and it won’t save taxpayers money in the long run. It will just create a cost shift.
Think about it this way: When sick people need care, hospitals cannot turn them away. Instead, they pass on those costs to people who do have insurance, or cities and towns have to pick up the bill.
If a 19- or 20-year-old who requires medicine for severe mental illness can’t afford his or her medication, he or she won’t be able to get or keep a job. They won’t be able to pay their rent or mortgage. Or, worse, they could become much sicker. Or what about the 19- or 20-year-old who can’t afford her insulin pump?
Taking care and medicine away from people who need it can be devastating, even deadly, for those individuals. And the domino effect is both economic and moral.
We all benefit when more people have insurance. It lowers costs for everyone.
Here is an astounding number: Five percent of the people who receive health insurance through MaineCare, or Maine’s Medicaid program, generate 55 percent of its cost. That’s because they are the most sick and need the most care. Democrats believe the best solution to lowering the state’s health care cost is focusing on better managing care for these people.
We’ve already seen pilot programs in the state making progress in these areas. Before the LePage administration took control, the state was on track to save millions more through managing member care than from the much smaller amounts projected from the GOP cuts.
Slashing health care for one set of needy people won’t help another set of needy people. Targeted reform that creates real savings and addresses the real problems in the system will.
It’s time Augusta got its priorities straight.
Rep. Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, is the lead House Democrat on the Health and Human Services Committee. He has served two terms in the Maine House.
Exactly right. The current reforms do nothing more than shift cost which helps no one, least of all those of us shouldering the bill.
I really don’t think that LePage understands the impact these cuts would have on Maine including those who do not qualify for MainCare. Although I may very well have missed something somewhere, I have yet to see him address or demonstrate any understanding of any of the negative effects on the families who would be affected by these cuts. If somebody knows of something, please point it out.
Nor has he demonstrated any concern or empathy for the people who would be cut from MaineCare, and instead waged a war on the poor calling them lazy, telling them to get off the couch and get a job, and trying to take away their “free lunch” while ignoring the fact that many of the available jobs in Maine, employed by hard working Mainers, don’t pay enough for families to make ends meet. He also ignores the fact that the poor in Maine are also people who he is supposed to serve as Governor.
Nor has he offered any viable solutions like forcing all businesses that operate in Maine to provide a living wage to their employees so that parents can afford food, rent, child care and health care for their kids on their own without having to work 2 or 3 part time jobs.
God forbid the business that thrive in Maine should take on any social responsibility to the communities which supports them or to the people off of whose backs they are profiting. Perhaps the poor should start protesting outside of businesses like WalMart for a raise like they did in California.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/09/walmart-la-chinatown-protesters_n_1333392.html
Thanks for that link. Just one more reason to stay out of WalMart, or any other corporation that pays “public assistance” wages and places the responsibility for their “associates” health care on the tax payers. The lack of a social conscience and obscene greed on the part of these corporations is destroying this once great country. We all have but one line of defense to stop them. Do not do business with them, period.
The 1st District court of Boston handed down the judgment, and it is because the federal government did not want to bring resolve by September 1–now extended to the end of October, evidently, quite close to the election of Nov. 6, perhaps having a play in this presently R controlled state.
The feds have 90 days to deliver an 0pinion. LePage chose not to request a waiver until August instead of in June when he knew he would have to because of the unfunded budget cuts. Instead he chose to file suit against the feds for no valid reason. Who’splaying politics here? Not the Feds!!!
We need to keep building our medical welfare populaltion until we are all on it, right, Mark? We can afford it, right, Mark? – even though our MaineCare program has shortchanged the hospitals by 100s of millions, forcing some to close, it has increased the cost of healthcare because of the non-reimbursement, and it has sucked all of the money out of the state budget including our roads. Great. This is the kind of thinking that brought Maine to the worst economy in the country.
Flat wages, off shoring of manufacturing jobs, and the complete lack of a social conscience on the part of big corporate America has led us to the worst economy in the country, not just the soaring cost of health care. If the wages had been keeping pace with inflation over the last 20 years, the state and federal government would have plenty of money to pay the bills to the hospitals. The dim wits in Washington forgot to allow for the reduction in income taxes that comes from wages being held down to pre 1990 levels when they enacted “free” trade. Between the cheap COMMUNIST Chinese labor and the cheap illegal immigrant labor, the government has stuck a knife in the backs of the working men and women of America by simply doing nothing. Does anyone wonder why we have been working on a wall between us and Mexico for many years now and only have a few miles of it built? They do not want to stop the flow of cheap illegal labor into our country, they just want to make it look like they are trying to stop it. They do not want to stop the flow of cheap COMMUNIST Chinese made goods into the U.S., they just want to talk about creating jobs here in America. We need to demand that Washington replace the import tariffs and level the playing field for American manufacturers ( the ones that had the guts to stay here, not the traitors who moved to China and call themselves Americans ) , raise the minimum wage until it is up into this century, and stop pandering to the top 1% and start looking out for the 99% for a change.