Mayors Protest Maine Governor’s Plan To Cut Medicaid

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) will wait until after the November election to decide if his state will expand its Medicaid program under Obamacare, but in the meantime, mayors of six cities in Maine are protesting LePage’s Medicaid cuts that will eliminate coverage for about 26,000 people in the state. The legislature passed the $20 million in cuts to MaineCare last spring. The cuts will go into effect October 1 if federal officials grant the state a waiver of Medicaid’s eligibility standards, which no state has been granted. In a letter to LePage, the mayors argue that “the elimination of insurance coverage for thousands of Maine people…presents significant hardships not just to the families affected but also to the municipalities in which they reside.”