AUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage and legislative Republicans have pushed for changes now melded into their party’s national health care bill. U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin pushed for others at a White House meeting on Tuesday.
But with a vote expected in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday and top Republicans ruling out more changes that they say would jeopardize the bill’s chances in the Senate — where it already looks like it has a hard road to passage — such efforts may be futile.
The American Health Care Act is Republicans’ plan to replace the Affordable Care Act ushered in under former President Barack Obama, largely substituting tax credits and state grants for subsidies in the current law.
From the conservative side, Maine Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew and 25 legislative Republicans co-signed a letter with other state lawmakers last week urging an immediate freeze of Medicaid expansion and the repeal of Obamacare insurance regulations. Maine is one of 19 states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the law.
They got the changes to Medicaid, one of LePage’s big sticking points: Originally, the law would have wound down support for Medicaid expansion after 2020, but states would now be barred immediately from expanding, according to CNN.
However, moderates are still spooked by the plan’s high costs for people shy of Medicare age. In Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District, cost figures attached to the plan aren’t pretty.
A 60-year-old in Piscataquis County who earns $30,000 a year would see federal aid drop by nearly 60 percent from $9,730 under Obamacare to $4,000, with someone needing to make $50,000 there to see a net benefit under the plan.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, cited that calculation as a reason she can’t support the bill in its current form, according to the Portland Press Herald.
But Poliquin, a Republican from the 2nd District, hasn’t said how he’ll vote on the plan after releasing a vaguely supportive statement when it was unveiled.
On Tuesday, he released a statement saying that he met with President Donald Trump on Tuesday to push for bigger tax credits for people between the ages of 50 and 64, while applauding other changes to the package that will leave elements of welfare policy to states.
But he didn’t take a position on it, with Poliquin spokesman Brendan Conley saying he is “continuing to carefully study and push for changes in this health care relief proposal.”
However, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that further changes could harm the bill’s chances of passage, saying, “We don’t want to put something in this bill that the Senate is telling us is fatal.”
So, Poliquin may well have to decide on this as is. He’s the one to watch in Maine’s delegation now.
Bruce Poliquin
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