Seacoast Online Editorial | Medicaid cuts not planned carefully
Source: Seacoast Online, Editorial, December 28, 2011
The plan by Maine Gov. Paul LePage to cut 65,000 people from the state’s Medicaid roles is unsubstantiated, unfair, unthoughtful and possibly quite costly.
The governor, in a Scrooge-like move, released the news in the weeks before Christmas that many poor and disabled Mainers would lose coverage in order to make up what he said was a $221 million shortfall in the state MaineCare program. The cuts to MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program, would come over the course of the biennium that began last July 1 and ends June 30, 2013.
Members of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee, which was convened in early December to consider the cuts, rightfully asked how he came up with that dollar amount. They’re still waiting for the answer, a fact that Sen. Dawn Hill, D-York, the Senate Democratic lead of the committee, finds unacceptable.
“That figure has not been verified,” she said. “We were told, ‘We have an emergency. We have a crisis,’ but we still do not have confirmation of that number.”
Hill doesn’t doubt that there’s a shortfall in MaineCare, but she said she suspects it’s significantly smaller than the $221 million proposed by the governor and Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew. Hill said she doesn’t want to talk about policy until she and the rest of the committee can verify the number.
It’s deeply troubling to us that the governor did not provide an exact accounting of how he arrived at that figure in the first place. Hill is absolutely right to demand that before the Appropriations Committee votes to cut a dime from MaineCare, and we sincerely hope the other members of the committee concur.
She said the solution is simple: instead of making “wholesale cuts,” hire experts to delve into the MaineCare account and surgically remove those who are marginally eligible, ineligible or bilking the system. This is a commonsense approach to a serious problem that has real ramifications for 65,000 Mainers.
Moreover, Hill and other have suggested that the cuts need to be considered within the entire DHHS budget — if not within the budget of the entire state government — so that MaineCare recipients are not bearing a disproportionate burden. Questions also remain whether the proposed cuts are going to actually cost the state money. For one, the 2-to-1 federal match for each state Medicaid dollar will be immediately lost. Questions have also been raised about whether Maine will incur penalties under the federal Affordable Care Act for states that cut programs from 2010 levels. U.S. Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said it is unlikely Maine will qualify for a waiver.
We are fortunate in southern York County that comparatively few people will feel the pinch of the governor’s proposed cuts. York Hospital, between its main campus in York and satellite care facilities in South Berwick, Wells and soon in Kittery, cares for many in the region, yet MaineCare patients comprise only 7 percent of the hospital’s total patient load, said President Jud Knox. He assured all patients who might be cut from MaineCare that the hospital and its doctors will continue to serve them. However, one real victim of the governor’s cuts if they go through unscathed will be the group home for the mentally ill on Woodbridge Road in York. This is particularly concerning to local state Rep. Windol Weaver, R-York, who called the residents there “members of the community.”
It is instructive to note that Weaver, a stalwart member of his party, is no fan of the Republican governor’s plan, which he calls “an extreme package.”
We find it heartening that Weaver’s opposition may signal a broad distaste across party lines for these cuts. A thoughtful, reasoned solution to this problem does exist, but it is not the one Gov. LePage has proposed.
— Seacoast Media Group