Mills set to reject LePage’s last-minute attempt to cut Medicaid

In the wake of her formal inauguration, during which Governor Janet Mills said she will implement voter-approved Medicaid expansion, advocacy groups are hopeful that Maine’s newly elected Democratic governor will quickly sideline the potential for work requirements to be placed on the state’s Medicaid recipients, an option granted by the federal government on Dec. 21 to former Governor Paul LePage in his final days in office.

“We’re pretty hopeful and confident that the Mills administration is going to do the right thing and scrap this terrible proposal,” said James Myall, a policy analyst with the Maine Center for Economic Policy who has been tracking the effects of work requirements imposed in other states like Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and New Hampshire. “They’re couched as work requirements, but they act as punishment for people who are not able to find work, or not able to work as much as is arbitrarily required.”

Click here to read the full story, published January 3, 2019, in Beacon.