By Virgil Dickson
September 5, 2018 - Modern Healthcare
Maine
Republican Gov. Paul LePage has submitted a plan that would make his state the
34th to expand Medicaid. But he hopes that doesn't happen. "Not one dime of the
hundreds of millions of dollars that will be needed to pay for the state's share
of the expansion has been appropriated," he said in a letter to CMS Administrator Seema Verma.
LePage only submitted the plan after a state Supreme Court judge tossed
out his appeal of a lower court's ruling requiring him to ask the
CMS to help expand Medicaid.
Under the voter-passed initiative, Maine was
supposed to start enrolling expansion beneficiaries by July 2. The initiative
gave LePage until April 3 to submit a state plan amendment to the CMS. LePage
balked at the measure, saying there were no state funds to expand coverage to an
additional 70,000 Mainers with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level.
The nonpartisan Office of Fiscal and Program Review estimates Maine's
share of Medicaid expansion will be about $45 million in the first year.
However, LePage's office said it could be as much as $60 million in the first
year and as much as $100 million annually in future years.
Robyn Merrill,
executive director of Maine Equal Justice Partners, was disappointed in the
letter sent to Verma and said it called into "question whether this SPA filing
can in any sense be considered a good faith effort to provide the healthcare
mandated by Maine's voters."
A spokesman for the CMS confirmed the agency
received the request but did not comment on if it would honor LePage's request
to not approve it.