AUGUSTA — The federal government is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s request to decide whether Maine can eliminate Medicaid coverage for thousands of low-income young adults.
LePage’s administration asked the court to review the case in February after a federal appeals court denied its plan to remove about 6,000 19-and-20-year-olds from the Maine’s Medicaid program.
In a court filing this week, the federal government said that a Supreme Court review isn’t necessary because the state’s arguments for why it should be allowed to trim the Medicaid rolls lack merit and because there’s no disagreement between lower courts to be settled.
No other state has sought to challenge the constitutionality of the requirement, “no other state has supported the petitioner’s challenge and even Maine’s own Attorney General has disavowed petitioner’s claims,” Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr. said in the filing.
Attorney General Janet Mills declined to represent the administration because she said the case had little legal merit and wouldn’t be a good use of time and money. LePage’s administration hired private attorneys and as of January had spent nearly $53,000 on legal fees to pursue the case.
Federal officials maintain that the cuts are prohibited because states must maintain their levels of Medicaid coverage for children until 2019 or lose funding for the program under the Affordable Care Act. The Medicaid program considers 18, 19 and 20-year-olds as children.
Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew said in February that Maine should be able to prioritize its Medicaid resources to help those who are most vulnerable. The administration argues that the Medicaid cuts should be allowed because the Supreme Court ruled in a previous case that states can’t be forced to expand their Medicaid programs.
But the federal government rejected that argument.
“The fact that the court held that Congress lacked authority to require all participating states to expand coverage to all non-elderly adults — including 19-and-20-year-olds — says nothing about Congress’s authority to require states that were already covering 19-and-20-year-olds as children to continue to do so,” it said.
The Supreme Court only accepts between 100 and 150 of the more than 7,000 cases it’s asked to review every year and they’re usually cases that have national significance or would resolve a conflict between lower courts. Four of the nine Supreme Court justices must agree for the court to accept a case.
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