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Our View: Governor should accept federal help to cut costs

Maine may be missing out on less harmful ways to cut costs in the MaineCare program.

With all the problems Maine is facing in revising the state budget to account for shortfalls in the Medicaid program, you'd think that the governor's office would take all the help it could get. But that's not the case.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, shown with President Obama during a recent news conference in Washington, said she talked to Maine Gov. Paul LePage within the last two weeks about Maine’s effort to grapple with Medicaid costs and offered to send help.

The Associated Press

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On Wednesday, Kathleen Sebelius, federal secretary of Health and Human Services, told the U.S. Senate finance committee that she had offered to send a team to Maine to help the state craft a plan that would comply with federal law. That offer apparently was not accepted.

Sebelius said she would be committed to help Maine save on short-term administrative costs and also look at long-term changes to programs that would save money over time.

"We again made it clear to (Gov. Paul LePage) what was within the state's discretion," she said to the committee, in response to a question from Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe. "(W)e did not have a lot of paper from the governor about what exactly was the proposal."

If LePage did have a response, he is keeping it to himself. The rest of us are left to guess why he did not take the secretary up on her offer.

One reason may be that he is less interested in reducing the state's social service budget than he is in making an ideological statement by yanking health coverage away from 65,000 people.

And he is willing to make that statement even if it shortchanges hospitals, shifts costs onto municipalities and private health insurance premium payers and threatens jobs in the health care sector. Abandoning the elderly, veterans, people with disabilities or serious illnesses is apparently also not a problem.

Maine Senate President Kevin Raye tried to put the best face on this news, saying that it is a "positive sign that a key administration official is now suggesting that the administration will work cooperatively with the state to reduce the explosive growth in the MaineCare program." But Sebelius made it clear to the committee that this was not a secret offer.

"We're doing that with states across the country," she said.

It is unclear why the governor did not immediately snap up her offer. It's a question lawmakers should be asking as they review ways to plug the same hole in the budget that would not have as much impact on the lives of the Maine residents who truly need help.