There have been many moments since I first took office back in 2010 when I have felt tremendous pride in this state, but few compared with what happened recently at Central Maine Medical Center. Surrounded by cheering hospital patients, employees and civic leaders, Gov. Paul LePage presented CMMC with a ceremonial check for more than $38 million.
While the check was a prop for the occasion, the money it represents is very real. It’s the hospital’s share of nearly $500 million that hospitals across the state are receiving this month for Medicaid welfare services they performed during the previous administration for which they were never paid.
Since taking office, Gov. LePage and Republicans in the Legislature worked together to retire more than $700 million in hospital welfare debt.
This debt was an embarrassment and a financial drag on Maine. It harmed the state’s credit rating and had a devastating impact on hospitals that were forced to lay off workers, leave vital positions unfilled and put capital improvement and expansion projects on hold. Some hospitals had to take out new lines of credit in order to make ends meet.
The skyrocketing debt coincided with the state’s decision, under the Angus King and John Baldacci administrations, to rapidly expand the number of Maine residents on its welfare rolls.
Maine’s Medicaid program, called MaineCare, was originally intended to provide a safety net for the disabled, elderly and poor, but grew beyond its ability to sustain itself as more and more able-bodied Mainers were given incentives to sign up for government-funded health care.
The repayment of the hospitals took about six months longer than it should have, once Gov. LePage presented his plan last January to pay down the debt by using the proceeds from a renegotiated state liquor contract. The proposal ran into numerous legislative roadblocks that were carried out by Democratic leadership, including their insistence on tying the repayment of our hospitals to another massive expansion of Medicaid in Maine.
Fortunately, that effort failed.
But incredibly, with the ink hardly dry on the checks to pay back the hospitals, Democratic leadership is once again pushing to drive up the welfare debt. They have announced plans to reintroduce a bill when the Legislature convenes in January to expand government-paid health care to 70,000 Mainers, many of whom are able-bodied, childless adults.
In other words, they want to repeat the same misguided policy that got the state into the hospital debt problem in the first place.
Those pushing for welfare expansion here in Maine say it would be foolish to pass on the opportunity, because 100 percent of the funding for it would come from the federal government. But there is no such thing as a “free lunch.”
While the first three years of the welfare expansion would be picked up by the federal government, the federal reimbursement rate would drop to 90 percent after that. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates Maine would then have to start contributing $75 million in additional funds to Medicaid every year, and that is a conservative estimate. It would likely be more than that.
That means Maine taxpayers would have to contribute an additional $150 million in every two-year budget going forward. We would also have to find more than $10 million in those first three years to administer the expansion.
The bottom line is Maine simply cannot afford it.
This is the time when we should be reflecting on and celebrating the long-overdue accomplishment of paying off the hospital debt, not contemplating new ways to put Maine taxpayers on the hook for more debt.
Sen. Garrett Mason, R-Lisbon Falls, serves on the Maine Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee.
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