In The Star Herald, June 5, Representative
Alexander Willette uses welfare pejoratively 6 times. He calls it “irresponsible” and the cause of
“hospital debt.”
But the United States Constitution has
a very different view of welfare.
In the preamble, “promote the general welfare,” is used as one of 6
reasons for establishing the Constitution.
In Article 1, Section 8, “provide for . . . the general welfare” is
listed as one use for Congress’s “Power
To lay and collect Taxes.” Medicaid
expansion is a good way to “promote and provide for the general welfare” for
tens of thousands of working poor in Maine who won’t be able to pay their
hospital bills without it.
It benefits hospitals,
taxpayers, and job seekers as well.
Willette accuses Representative Robert
Saucier and his Democratic friends of reneging on their promise to pay the debt
and of playing party politics because they attached Medicaid expansion to the
bill to pay the hospitals. But there was
a good reason to combine the two issues. According to Matthew
Stone in the Bangor
Daily News April 2, 2013, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis
“projects Maine’s hospitals would see $348 million more in payments from
Medicaid over the next decade if the state expanded the program. Hospitals also
would have to provide less care for which they aren’t paid.” Both the Maine Hospital Association and the
Maine Medical Association support Medicaid expansion.
I can’t agree
with Willette’s assertion that past welfare expansions “caused the hospital
debt.” Providing health care to those
who can’t afford it may have contributed to unpaid hospital bills, but it was the Maine
state government’s inability or refusal to pay that caused the debt.
Willette’s accusation that Saucier, in
supporting Medicaid expansion, broke his promise to bring jobs to Aroostook County
is contradicted by a statement of Gordon Smith from
the Maine Medical Association: “A
Medicaid expansion could support the creation of about 2,000 health care jobs”
(Matthew Stone. BDN. March 5, 2013). To create the most jobs, Maine needs
to pay the hospital debt and expand
Medicaid.
Willette’s attack on Saucier is
unreasonable and unjust.
Shorter version published June 10, Bangor Daily News.
