Veto likely for last Medicaid expansion effort
Gov. Paul LePage is likely to veto the Maine Legislature’s last effort to expand Medicaid in Maine, which was passed in both chambers on Thursday night.
The Bangor Daily News reported that the tally of votes by the House of Representatives and Senate to approve the Medicaid expansion bill is likely not enough to override a veto by LePage, though proponents have indicated they expect to lobby Republicans who may be on the fence.
The latest bill, introduced earlier on Thursday by House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, mirrors a plan that was supported by Republicans in New Hampshire. The Democratic legislator told the BDN that the plan was “dramatically different” from past expansion efforts.
Forgoing the original vision in the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act to permanently expand Medicaid to 70,000 low-income Mainers, Eve’s bill would put those people on Medicaid for one year. By summer 2015, nearly 80 percent of those recipients would then shift to using private insurance plans purchased by the state. The remaining recipients would remain on Medicaid, otherwise known in the state as MaineCare.
LePage said in a written statement on Thursday said Eve’s plan is “as political as it gets” and called the bill a last-minute attempt to “pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.” The Republican governor has vetoed four past efforts to expand Medicaid during the 126th Legislature’s two-year session. He has nine days, not counting Sunday, to sign, veto or let the bill pass into law.
Meanwhile, another measure approved by the Legislature this week to expand Medicaid, proposed by Senate Majority Leader Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, awaits consideration by LePage.
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