Healthcare in Maine is nightmarish. Almost as bad as Canada. Troy Jackson and Hannah Pingree and the billionaire leftists funding the Maine Democrat machine will blame it on Susan Collins, but that’s an insidious lie — Steve Robinson

Maine’s healthcare system is broken because Janet Mills and Democratic lawmakers added able-bodied childless adults and non-citizens to MaineCare.
The massive expansion of Medicaid not only broke our budget, it broke our hospitals.

Medicaid and Medicare reimburse hospitals at such a low rate that they lose money. The losses are tolerable when 10 to 20% of the population is on welfare. But when 40%+ of the population is on welfare, and aging seniors are taking advantage of the Medicare benefits they’ve already paid for, and then you add tens of thousands of non-citizens to the welfare rolls — then your hospitals start to die. The non-citizens don’t just get free childbirth care and free everything until they are 21 (and usually older). They also get free translation services for Spanish, Portuguese, Lingala, Mandarin, and Somali, inter alia. All of these costs have made it impossible to run a hospital in Maine.

We also know, thanks to Maine Health Data Organization data, that the MaineCare population uses hospitals WAY more than people who actually have co-pays and deductibles. They also use the emergency room like it’s an urgent care clinic or a primary care office. This only exacerbates the cost issue and contributes to far worse health care experiences for the people who are actually paying the bills.

Now Jackson and Pingree are bleating about “Medicare for All,” but that’s just the same old tired BS. It means worse health care for everyone, more hospital closures, longer wait lines, and more talented doctors fleeing the state or moving into cash only practices.

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