Obamacare - Maine Hard-wired in on Medicaid

[Winter_123]

Once you enter the lobster trap. There is no getting out.

LePage administration eyeing MaineCare cuts | The Kennebec Journal, Augusta, ME

 

[VolAgent]

See, the problem is all the middlemen, they get greedy. We should just make all our purchases direct from the state, and then let them decide how much to pay suppliers and workers. We wouldn't need business people anymore. I'm sure this would work, do you know of any country that has tried this yet?

 

[ins.dave]

Why do I love this metaphor?

 

[Norwayguy]

Deeper MaineCare cuts would have created more uninsured Mainers and cost the state in lost federal funding, said Christopher St. John, executive director of the Maine Economic Policy Center. "That's two-thirds federal dollars."

Where did this *** get his math skills...Yes it is true for every $3 in Mainecare Spending $2 Federal dollars does come in but hello it is still $1 of tax money that is not reimbursed and costs the state and taxpayers.

It might sound good when we are talking $1 and $2 amounts but when you factor that Mainecare has a general fund budget of $1.3 Billion yes thats Billion with a capital B and represents 21% of Lepages budget....factor in the federal dollars to that percentage and the total dollars spent on Mainecare equals 63% of the total Maine Budget.

Gov. LePage is proposing about $50 million worth of MaineCare savings over the next two years.

So one would think the Mainecare budget is shrinking....NO thats not so.

Overall, LePage's budget proposal would increase state spending on MaineCare by more than $200 million over the next two years

Maine currently goes beyond many states' programs by providing MaineCare access to childless adults and parents of enrolled children.
The Affordable Care Act will require all states to offer similar access starting in 2014. In the meantime, the law says, any states that already meet the future eligibility standards have to keep them in place, or face a penalty.

So a Democratic Govenor with a Democratic State Legislature voluntarily increased our Mainecare costs now that we have budgetary problems...ObamaCare says we can not decrease back to lower levels even though the level we are at is not required of other states until 2014. Gee thanks Feds for screwing the states in the midst of budgetary crisis.

Getting back to the Maine budget for a second...The total Maine budget will be something on the order of 6 Billion 190 Million 476 Thousand dollars based on the articles numbers... and Total spending on Mainecare will total 3 Billion 900 Million or so the numbers just seem amazing.