After Republicans refused to get their feet wet with the bill engineered to overhaul Obamacare, Maine Governor Paul LePage is exploring his options to keep his constituents in the healthcare system.
“We are just going to withdraw the state and just go do our own thing. The federal government obviously is broken so they are not going to stand in the way. They can’t get anything done,” Le Page told local media.
A report by
Portland Press Herald said that the governor may invoke a waiver, which is granted to state governments that ask for it and gives them more latitude in spending federal health care funds which are provided to them.
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The governor has yet to give a concrete plan on how he will create a state health insurance system for Maine residents, but he suggested that it could be modeled after the workers’ compensation system.
Governor LePage also told the Herald that the state could go the way of reviving a pre-Obamacare law, known as PL 90, which set up a high-risk pool and offered insurance subsidies for a fee, “because it showed promise, because we were lowering premiums and we were getting care for people in Maine. Right now (under the ACA), everybody has access but nobody can afford it.”
Also, according to the
Herald, “conservatives argued that PL 90 was working and lowering insurance rates in Maine.”
However, critics pointed out that the law that created the system gives insurers too much prerogative in raising rates.
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