AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Department of Health and Human Services asked a Maine court this week to throw out a lawsuit seeking to force Gov. Paul LePage’s administration to implement voter-approved Medicaid expansion.
The state’s response to the lawsuit filed by expansion advocates last month in Kennebec County Superior Court is a more formal version of the case that the Republican governor has long made: He can’t implement a law that hasn’t yet been funded by the Legislature.
Maine voters approved expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act in a 2017 referendum that gave the LePage administration until April 3 to send an expansion plan to the federal government and start covering some of the 70,000 eligible residents by July 2.
But LePage, who vetoed expansion bids five times before the referendum passed, has erected high hurdles for the Legislature to fund the new law. He has said it must be funded at a contested estimate from his administration and that he wouldn’t approve any mechanism that raised taxes or touched the state’s reserve fund.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “LePage asks Maine court to toss suit aimed at forcing Medicaid expansion,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Michael Shepherd, please follow this link to the BDN online.
