Gov. LePage has assembled a remarkable record of sabotaging economic growth in Maine by repeatedly refusing to issue a variety of voter-approved bonds to maintain and improve our physical and educational infrastructure. Tens and tens of millions of dollars of voter-approved investment in our economy have been thwarted in successive rounds of political hostage-taking and payback. Tens of millions more in federal funds have been lost through negligence and poor management — the $20-plus million in annual federal funding for Riverview Psychiatric Center for example.

But as deplorably impressive as this list is, it pales beside one single example of economic foolhardiness: the failure to expand Medicaid, or MaineCare. MaineCare is health insurance, not welfare. When the people it covers get medical care, the providers get paid, just like with any other health insurance, except that the most of the money comes from the federal government via the state government rather than from a health insurance company.

If MaineCare were expanded, federal funds of $250 to $300 million or more per year would pour into the healthcare sector of Maine’s economy, raising wages and staffing, and preventing millions of dollars of uncompensated care that increases costs for everyone. Moreover, those funds make people healthier, allowing them to stay in the workforce, which is starting to suffer shortages that also limit growth. Beyond the direct boost to the healthcare sector, all the businesses that sell goods and services to hospitals, healthcare providers and their employees, from equipment manufacturers to restaurants and car dealers, will also benefit from that increased revenue.

The Legislature has twice approved, and the governor has twice vetoed, expansion of MaineCare. The governor justifies his vetoes with the infamous “Alexander Report,” a political hack job for which Maine taxpayers were charged nearly a million dollars that was shown to be a cut-and-paste of boilerplate relying on cherry picked assumptions, unrealistically grim cost predictions, and denial of any budgetary savings, which then flew in the face of reason, but now also flies in the face of experience. DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew now makes reference only to “internal analyses” as she makes unsubstantiated assertions of astronomical costs.

Maine has already missed out on some $700 million that would already be at work in our economy now, but for the governor’s vetoes. Two Republicans who have done the math and refuse to be cowed by the Governor’s bombast, Senators Katz and Saviello, have introduced legislation, LD 633, to expand MaineCare again, though with a face-saving tweak that Republican governors and legislatures elsewhere have used to avoid shooting their own state economies in the foot for the sake of ideology. The tweak will make the expansion somewhat less easily accessed by the people to be covered, but it is far, far better than no expansion at all for them, and especially for the Maine economy as a whole! As a small business owner and employer, I know how essential it is to invest in both people and equipment to grow. To refuse to accept a massive investment in major sector of our economy, at little or no net cost to the state’s budget, is to senselessly weaken the economy and our people, literally.

I strongly urge readers to contact their legislators to ask them to vigorously support LD 633, and stop starving the Maine economy of the money it needs to grow! Expanding MaineCare is the low-hanging fruit of economic development for our state; let’s finally pick it and move on to a healthier and more prosperous future!

Will Neilson,
Arrowsic