Thanks for your recent editorial regarding the supposed “waiting list” for MaineCare (“Our View: Gov. LePage using elderly, disabled as a political weapon,” Feb. 23).

If this group of Mainers, already on the MaineCare rolls yet needing services beyond what MaineCare provides, were really a concern of the LePage administration, the administration would have allocated monies to cover their needs before enacting millions of dollars in tax cuts that mostly benefit wealthy Mainers.

Yet as recently as Feb. 24, during the Republican weekly address on radio, this “waiting list” was once again used as a pawn in this cynical game.

Lives are on the line. Without this expansion, paid for entirely by the federal government for three years, there will be Mainers who will die because they lack access to timely, effective care.

Many more won’t be able to access necessary preventive care, costing the system even more in years to come. Most of these folks are the working poor, and productivity suffers right along with them.

Many Republican governors, realizing the positive financial jolt to their states’ economies with the influx of federal dollars and honoring the basic human needs of their citizens, did the right thing and accepted these federal dollars.

The Republicans in Augusta need to do the same. There is nothing to be gained by doing otherwise.

Mary Ann Larson

New Gloucester

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