Shame on you!

What were you thinking, separating children from their mothers, families and all they know, all as a means of prosecuting their parents?

Who’s being prosecuted? Imagine someone taking your youngest child away from you, his mother and all that he knows. Then who would be prosecuted?

I can’t even bring myself to call you President, for no leader of the free world would make the decision involving children that you have. I don’t have a solution to the problem, but you have enough intelligence, wealth and power around you to make a more appropriate decision.

As a mother and K-8 teacher, I can see that the children are already in crisis. You have problems on the streets now.

I understand that you have returned a scant number of children, but that is not enough. As these children grow up with no support or mother’s bonding, there will be more disgruntled and mentally confused people on the streets.

Return all the children. This must end now!

Kim Eder,
Brunswick

Medicaid expansion the law

When the Maine Heritage Policy Center calls Gov. Paul LePage and the House Republicans “heroes” for vetoing funding of Medicaid expansion, one should remember that MHPC is a partisan think tank. Partisan is defined as “showing a biased, unthinking allegiance to a cause,” to wit less government. Starting with that answer and presenting incomplete and/or misleading data to lead one there does not inform debate. Data first, answer to follow allows the facts to be the focus.

One example: MHPC states it is a “myth” that Medicaid expansion reduces the uninsured rate. Let’s look. Medicaid expansion is intended (under the Affordable Care Act) to allow the non-elderly access to healthcare if they are too poor to obtain subsidies under the ACA. A 2017 report (Kilbreth) compares the proportion of non-elderly uninsured in 31 states that expanded Medicaid. In the first year alone, the proportion of non-elderly adults uninsured fell from 39 percent to 32 percent in the expansion states, with the greatest impact in poor rural areas.

Prior to the ACA, Maine along with two other states, expanded Medicaid eligibility (MaineCare, 2005). Compared to similar control states without expansion, the three states with expanded access showed a 25 percent relative increase in Medicaid coverage. Kilbreth noted that Maine’s uninsured non-elderly population fell from 14.3 percent in 1999 to 11.7 percent in 2007, the first year in which MaineCare was fully implemented, and continued to decline relative to other states, until at least 2012.

So, implementation of Medicaid expansion has in fact decreased the uninsured rate in the target group — no myth. Medicaid expansion is not a suggestion in Maine — it’s the law. The fact that some House Republicans enable LePage to ignore his Constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” makes them accomplices, not heroes.

Steven Zimmerman,
Topsham