AUGUSTA, Maine - Gov. Paul LePage says he's returning to Washington D.C. with his health commissioner to lobby against the GOP's newly unveiled healthcare proposal. LePage has repeatedly bashed the proposal.
The governor told Portland radio station WGAN that he's especially displeased with a provision that would allow states to continue expanding Medicaid.
"There's whole lot of talk about repeal and replace but we have to reform this," he said. "This system ... you can't go from Obamacare to RINO-care. You gotta go and fix it."
LePage says he and Department and Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew plan to meet with leaders in Congress as well as officials in the Trump administration. LePage said he's leaving for D.C. Thursday afternoon. It will be his third trip to D.C. in as many weeks.
The governor has been a vocal critic of the GOP health care proposal ever since it became public earlier this week. He has made several appearances on local and national radio programs, as well as Fox News to blast the proposal.
Earlier this week he sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who collaborated with the Trump administration to draft the proposal. In his letter LePage wrote, "It appears congressional Republicans are still intent on catering to big-government lobbyists and politicians in states that took Obamacare’s welfare-expansion bait."
LePage has repeatedly used "welfare expansion" to describe Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, offered incentives to states to expand the health program for low-income residents by increasing the federal reimbursement rate. Maine, under LePage's guidance, has defeated nearly a half dozen proposal to expand Medicaid, which operates as MaineCare here.
Maine is one of 19 states that have not expanded Medicaid through the ACA.
The Ryan plan would eliminate Medicaid expansion starting in 2020, while also lowering the federal reimbursement rate. LePage says expanding the program and accepting the lower reimbursement rate will create instability in the state budget, and would transform the current system of subsidized insurance purchased on the individual marketplace to a tax credits-based system.
The ACA offers individual health insurance for people who can't get commercial insurance through their employer or who are self-employed. Subsidies are provided for those earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty limit.
About 80,000 Mainers have insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
The GOP healthcare overhaul has been widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans. Maine's congressional delegation is largely opposed to it with the exception of 2nd Congressional District Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican, who said in a statement earlier this week that the plan would provide “much-needed health insurance relief.”
But others, including U.S. Sen. Angus King and LePage, worry the plan will be especially tough on Mainers in rural areas and those who are older. King, in a floor speech in the Senate on Wednesday, said a 60-year-old in Aroostook County making $30,000 annually could see their healthcare benefit cut by over half.
“It's shift and shaft: shift the cost and shaft the people who need coverage,” King said.
Both the ACA and the GOP proposal use tax credits to help Americans buy insurance. But the ACA calculated the amount of the credit based on the cost of insurance in specific areas and one's ability to pay. The GOP plan is different in that the credits are awarded based on a person's age.
Several analyses, including one by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that low income Americans living in high cost areas would be hardest hit by the GOP plan compared to what is available to them under the ACA.
