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No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

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You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Maine Medicaid is a go

Maine Medicaid is a go

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The Portland Press Herald reports that a Maine judge has ordered Maine to expand Medicaid immediately.

Kennebec County Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy issued the order Wednesday, detailing seven steps the Maine Department of Health and Human Services must take to comply with the expansion law, which extends health care coverage to as many as 80,000 low-income Mainers. The law was approved by 59 percent of the state’s voters in November 2017, but LePage repeatedly has blocked implementation by vetoing legislation to fund the expansion and refusing to take administrative steps….

Murphy’s order, retroactive to July 2, requires the DHHS to file an amendment to paperwork already submitted to the federal government. The amendment must state that there are no legal or constitutional grounds for delaying the expansion. In the initial paperwork filed by the DHHS, during a process known as a state plan amendment or SPA, the LePage administration urged the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to reject the state’s application.

If this order is not stayed by the Maine appellate courts, then a straight forward expansion with no work requirements will begin almost immediately with retroactive claims being paid for services that happened during the summer.

For the people who make too much for legacy Medicaid and too little for subsidies, this is wonderful news in Maine.

 

 

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  3. 3.

    Victor Matheson

    Actually, the best news would be if the court ordered the arrest of LePage for violating state law by refusing to implement the Maine constitution like ordered to by Maine’s voters. But Medicaid expansion is a nice second.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    Lawlessness in high office does seem to be a Republican thing, especially when the law gets in the way of what a Republican wants to do. If LePage would rather go to jail than do as the people of his state rightly command, give him what he wants: jail him.

  13. 13.

    MomSense

    David do you know if there is a deadline for people to apply? I’m wondering if people have to apply before the end of open enrollment.

  14. 14.

    Frankensteinbeck

    LePage repeatedly has blocked implementation by vetoing legislation to fund the expansion and refusing to take administrative steps

    The pettiness and cruelty is breathtaking, isn’t it? It’s not like there’s any even close to legitimate reason to fight this hard. For Republicans, hurting people has become the only moral imperative they understand. I’ve watched this up close all my life, but every once in awhile I stop and look with fresh eyes and it hits me again just how deranged actions like LePage’s are.

  15. 15.

    WereBear

    @Frankensteinbeck: For Republicans, hurting people has become the only moral imperative they understand.

    I always wondered how the Third Reich managed to find so many people devoid of human compassion… I’m starting to get it.

  17. 17.

    Miss Bianca

    @Frankensteinbeck: It is amazing. My friend Jeff Dorchen wrote a play back in the early 90s called “Ugly’s First World”, which concerns the jail break of a trio of damned souls from Hell. We find out that in Hell everyone gets reduced to one basic awful trait of theirs, so our three “heroes” are Ugly, Stupid, and Cruel.

    And that’s all I see when I look at modern Republicans. Ugly, stupid, and cruel. Without the benefit of any of the singing or witty banter that my friend Jeff came up with.

  18. 18.

    TomatoQueen

    Glad for Maine, especially the bit about no work requirements. Something ugly and dangerous in that regard, but so far unspecified, is coming for Virginia, and I’m not amused. Also, too, all the goo-goo starry-eyed breathless sainting of our gov, Ralph Northam, is ever-so-slowly-but-could-be-surely undermined by rumbling about behind the scenes nefarious behavior with regard to fracking, pipelines, and that hole of vileness Old Dominion. The reports so far are not WaPo but tiny yips and screeches out of Richmond, which might as well be the moon. Meanwhile, tho’, glad for Maine.

  20. 20.

    Haroldo

    @WereBear:

    I always wondered how the Third Reich managed to find so many people devoid of human compassion… I’m starting to get it.

    The phenomenon is real, isn’t it? It’s measurable. I am still foundering on ‘Why’. That’s what I don’t get.

  22. 22.

    David Anderson

    A thought for next week: as Maine will be retroactively expanding Medicaid to 7/2/18… Are people insured if they do not know they are insured?

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