Residents of Maine will head to the polls next week where they'll decide if the state will participate in Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, but before they do Governor Paul LePage has one last desperate, stupid lie to tell them about the program.
In an attack on the state's hospitals which support Medicaid expansion, LePage inexplicably said expansion will take resources away from people who already qualify for coverage.
“It’s obvious the CEO of Maine Med and other hospitals do not care about taking resources away from our most vulnerable Mainers – including our elderly and intellectually and physically disabled people – just so they can give free, taxpayer-funded healthcare to adults who should be working and contributing to the cost of their own health insurance,” LePage said.
We can infer that LePage doesn't know a goddamn thing about Medicaid expansion and possibly not even Medicaid itself because not a single word of this attack makes any sense.
Those who are already covered by Medicaid are not going to lose their coverage. They're covered under Maine's Medicaid program as it exists today. Expanding Medicaid will afford the state more money, not less. It will cover more people, not fewer. Those who are eligible now will not cease to be eligible.
Moreover, the people of Maine are already paying for Medicaid expansion even if they cannot presently take advantage of it. Their tax dollars are paying for expansion in other states that have accepted the program while their own governor, Paul LePage, has fought to deny it to them for no substantiated reason.
For the state's hospitals, it should be obvious why they support expansion. They'll have more patients and fewer of them will trickle into the emergency room without coverage.