Among the many problems with Gov. LePage’s State of the State address was the total absence of a plan he might have in place to meet the national record Maine holds for numbers of disabled, elderly and poor, the rising numbers of heroin users and the overcapacity jails in this state.

During his tenure, he has done nothing to enhance the rate of reimbursements to home health agencies and nursing homes, all of which face a daily struggle to survive in the face of rising food, medicine and fuel costs.

Rather than approve 100 percent federal reimbursement for Medicaid expansion, he appeared to want us all to believe that this is “welfare” expansion. Never once in his speech did he bother to clarify that Medicaid expansion does not equal “welfare” expansion.

His speech would have us all believe, as he said, that social services are “rife with abuse” by able-bodied men buying cigarettes, alcohol and girlie magazines.

If that is true, after three years of his administration, why is it still going on? Isn’t it his job or the job of the hospital lobbyist he appointed welfare head to identify these abusers, enforce existing policy or set new ones? Doesn’t the buck stop with LePage?

Apparently he has not recognized that our jails are overcrowded and the “war on drugs” is a failure. He made no mention of how we can afford a continuance of 24-hour jail rather than community treatment programs, as in the Netherlands and other places where drug abuse, treated as an illness, has been curtailed.

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Last, as a veteran of more than 30 years of military service, I find it disengenuous that Gov. LePage, who did not volunteer to serve in Vietnam, now appears to pander to the brave volunteers presently serving in the military.

Patrick Eisenhart

Augusta

 


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