PORTLAND – Republican gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage on Thursday called for Maine to sue the federal government over health care reform.

“I fear the federal program,” he said, noting that in the 1970s he lived in Canada under a universal system. “It’s rationed care. It scares me.”

LePage’s comments came at a forum sponsored by the Southern Maine Chapter of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. He was joined at the forum by the four other candidates on the Nov. 2 ballot: Democrat Libby Mitchell, and independents Eliot Cutler, Shawn Moody and Kevin Scott.

Unlike LePage, the other candidates talked about ways to implement the reform.

Mitchell, Maine’s Senate president, said exchanges called for in the federal law will provide a way for people to buy insurance if they can’t afford it through the individual market.

“The exchanges, for the first time, will give us an opportunity to have a great big pool,” she said. “That’s my goal, to make sure no one in Maine goes without proper access to health care at an affordable rate.”

Cutler said states will have the power to shape the exchanges, not the federal government.

“Our objective in the state of Maine is to create a healthy work force and a healthy population,” he said. “We need to provide access to health care services to everyone in the state.”

LePage, the mayor of Waterville, said voters must send new representatives to the Legislature so it can choose a new attorney general. Attorney General Janet Mills, a Democrat, was appointed by lawmakers in 2008 to a two-year term. She rejected calls earlier this year to join other states that were challenging the federal law.

“We can join the other 20 states to challenge Obamacare because, quite frankly, I believe it to be unconstitutional,” LePage said.

A federal judge in Michigan ruled Thursday that the new health-care overhaul law is constitutional, rejecting an argument that Congress lacked the power to require the legislation’s “individual mandate,” which orders virtually all Americans to purchase health insurance.

The candidates forum, moderated by Chris Hall, vice president of the Portland Regional Chamber and a longtime State House lobbyist, gave the candidates a chance to talk about state spending on Medicaid, economic development, the state budget and whether there’s a “trust gap” between voters and government.

Over 90 minutes, the candidates laid out their plans and occasionally took one another to task.

Scott, a businessman from Andover, said people are tired of politics as usual.

“The vanity and the celebrity, and basically the greed, it’s ridiculous,” he said. “There’s no place for these kinds of behavioral patterns in the public sector.”

Moody, founder of Moody’s Collision Centers, said he would win back voters’ trust by requiring state agencies to issue monthly reports with goals and projections.

“How do you wash away cynicism?” he said. “You get accurate, timely information in front of the people.”

Cutler, an attorney and a former aide to Sen. Edmund Muskie, said the state has lacked leadership. He cited one of Mitchell’s bills as an example, saying a strong governor would have made it clear from the start that he or she would not have supported Mitchell’s bill calling for mandatory paid sick leave.

The bill, which was killed in committee after several meetings, would have required Maine businesses to provide at least some paid sick time to employees.

“I think it was well intentioned,” he said, “but it sucked the oxygen out of Augusta for most of the year.”

Cutler said the time devoted to the bill could have been better spent on other issues.

In response, Mitchell said the bill was killed at her request and she didn’t let it get out of committee because she knew it didn’t have enough support to pass.

“There are many women in this state who sometimes go to work sick, and they may even sneeze in your food in a restaurant because they can’t afford to stay home,” she said.

At least twice, LePage linked Mitchell to other top Democrats.

“Under Gov. Baldacci, Senate President Libby Mitchell and Speaker Hannah Pingree, the annual cost of health insurance has skyrocketed in the last eight years,” he said.

Moody said he would rename the state Department of Health and Human Services the Department of Health and Human Resources. He said the state gives too many services to those who need only a little help.

“When people need assistance, they need a lifeline and not a lifestyle,” he said.

On the issue of MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program, Scott said the state should look at whether it makes sense to tighten eligibility.

“How about a small co-pay for those people on MaineCare?” he said.

Cutler and LePage said the state has been relying on gimmicks to balance the budget.

Cutler criticized furlough days for state employees and pushing payments from one fiscal year to the next. He referred to a report released last week by Envision Maine, a nonpartisan group dedicated to good government, that called for major changes in state government.

“We need to make fundamental changes,” he said. “We’re not going to do it with tweaks and nibbles.”

LePage said voters have asked for additional education funding, so that should be the new governor’s top funding priority. After that, everything else falls into place, he said.

“When you run out of money, then you run out of programs,” he said.

Mitchell said the state has tried to curb spending with reforms, including school district consolidation and changing the correctional system to freeze county property tax rates.

“Those things are wildly unpopular when you make those changes, but they were very important to keep” the property tax rates down, she said.

 

MaineToday Media State House Writer Susan Cover can be contacted at 620-7015 or at:

scover@centralmaine.com

 

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