By Sen. Roger Sherman
It was one of those rare moments in Augusta during this legislative session when everyone seemed to be on the same page. The Governor’s Office and Republicans and Democrats in the Legislature had finally reached an agreement on paying off the $484 million debt to Maine hospitals. The debt would be paid off with a revenue bond, which would be financed through a new state liquor contract. The hospitals would get the money they were owed by the state, enabling them to hire much-needed staff and begin expansion projects that have been on hold. Houlton Regional Hospital, in the Senate District I represent, is owed nearly $10 million.
Two legislative committees were prepared to give unanimous approval to the hospital repayment plan, until partisan politics got in the way.
Democratic leadership made an ill-conceived, last-minute decision to attach Medicaid welfare expansion to the hospital payment bill. They did this, without giving any warning, by first ramming it through the Health and Human Services Committee, which had nothing to do with the hospital repayment, and then through the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, which passed it along party lines.
There are a number of reasons why attaching these two pieces of legislation to each other makes no sense. Chief among them is the fact the Governor’s Office is currently negotiating with the federal government to get the best deal for Maine. The feds have said they will pay 100 percent of the cost of providing Medicaid to an additional 70,000 Mainers for the first few years of the expansion. But after that, the reimbursement rate goes down to 90 percent, meaning we would be on the hook for providing state-funded health care to a new group of Maine residents -some of whom are healthy, childless adults-for the foreseeable future. Maine already pays a higher percentage of its budget on Medicaid than most states do.
As expected, the Governor vetoed the bill that tied Medicaid expansion to the hospital payment bill. But now, we have another chance to get it right.
Shortly after vetoing the bill, Governor Paul LePage resubmitted legislation to pay Maine’s hospital debt. That bill will once again go before the Legislature at some point in the remaining weeks of the First Regular Session of the 126th Legislature.
For years now, the debt owed to Maine hospitals has hung over our state like a black cloud, putting a financial strain on the hospitals and negatively affecting our credit rating.
Instead of playing political games, we in the Legislature need to do the right thing and pay our bill, which is long overdue.
Sen. Roger Sherman represents Senate District 34, which includes southern and central Aroostook County, including Fort Fairfield, Houlton and Presque Isle.
