Unsustainable welfare expansions
hurt Maine families
By Rep. Alex Willette
(R-Mapleton)
Maine Democrats are once again pushing for another massive expansion of our state’s medical welfare program. This time, it’s the biggest expansion yet. If they get their way, our state budget will be plunged into an irreversible downward spiral and Maine taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill.
Democrats are saying Maine will get free money from the federal government if only we say “yes” to putting more Mainers on the welfare rolls as a part of ObamaCare.
Well, as we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and as P.J. O’Rourke said, “if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it’s free!”
The reality is that in order to get federal funds for Medicaid expansion, Maine has to fork over $150 million of its own money in each budget cycle. We can pay for that by taxing the average Maine worker—who already pays the seventh highest taxes in the country—another $250, or we can pay for it by slashing funding for education, aid to farmers, law enforcement, and other important government services.
Why should Maine workers have to fork over more money to the government and why should our children have to go without so that 70,000 more able-bodied young adults can go onto the welfare rolls?
We’ve been down this road before with 16 years of liberal governors enjoying Democratic majorities in the legislature. Back in 1997, Maine spent about $232 million per year on MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. Now, we spend a whopping $737 million—a 318 percent increase. During that time, Medicaid’s share of the state budget doubled. Medicaid keeps eating up a larger slice of the budget pie, crowding out funding for everything from education to forest rangers to agriculture. Over the years, Democrats even raided millions from disaster relief funds in order to feed the welfare beast.
The old-guard Democratic machine financed much of this overspending by simply neglecting to pay Maine’s hospitals for Medicaid services rendered. This month, Gov. LePage finally paid that bill off over Democrats’ objections, with $12 million going to The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle and $4 million to Cary Medical Center in Caribou.
While Maine’s budget has been crippled by these expansions, the people Medicaid was intended to help out—our children, elderly, and disabled—are being left in the dust by the stampede of able-bodied people who have been thrown into the system. There are 3,100 severely disabled folks on Medicaid waitlists even as able-bodied young men like me get health care.
This kind of rampant government overspending is unsustainable. Fortunately, there are alternatives so that everyone can get covered. In the coming months, low-income Mainers will be able to purchase federally-subsidized private health insurance on the exchanges. In fact, most of those proposed to be covered under the Democrats’ welfare expansion scheme will also be eligible for private plans for as little as $5 per week. This comes at no cost to the state taxpayer but also requires people to have some skin in the game with a modest premium and small copays.
Why should Maine taxpayers have to shell out millions so that able-bodied young people can avoid a $5 per week insurance premium?
Also, Maine Republicans implemented a health insurance reform that, while starting out rough for those of us in rural Maine, has paid dividends in the long run. Before the new law was enacted in 2011, 3.9 percent of small businesses in northern Maine were seeing health insurance premium decreases. Now, 21.2 percent are seeing their rates go down. Before reform, 46.6 percent were seeing excessive rate hikes of 20 percent or more. Now, that number has dropped to 12.2 percent.
Maine must reduce its welfare dependency if we are to create jobs and opportunity. We must stop thinking about what sounds good next year and start thinking about what will make us better off next decade or next generation. More welfare spending means more taxes and dependency, which means fewer workers, fewer businesses, fewer jobs, and less economic vitality, and then more welfare spending to patch over the poverty problem. It’s a vicious cycle that liberals have put Maine in over the past 30 years or so, and it’s about time we broke it and charted a new course for Maine’s future.
Rep. Alexander Willette of Mapleton is the Assistant Republican Leader in the Maine House of Representatives. He can be reached at (207) 287-1440, or via e-mail at RepAlexander.Willette@legislature.maine.gov.
