EDITORIAL: Delaying Medicaid expansion isn’t only cruel — it is unlawful
We hope the administration will comply with the court order, but given Gov.
Lawmakers can remove one of LePage's excuses for not beginning the expansion process by appropriating the funds to do so. At least one legislative leader, Assistant Senate Majority Leader
Voters last year approved an expansion of Medicaid, largely to be paid for by the federal government, to extend health insurance to about 70,000 low-income Mainers. That set in place a timetable of state actions that the administration has ignored.
Health care and anti-poverty advocates filed suit in late April to compel DHHS to file the required plan.
At a hearing in late May,
Murphy reiterated that point in a 13-page ruling on Monday and blasted DHHS for taking no action to comply with the requirements of the expansion law.
"The [DHHS] Commissioner has not cited to any authority suggesting that an agency can be considered to have substantially complied with a directory statute by taking no action at all," she wrote. "The Court concludes that the Commissioner's complete failure to act cannot be considered substantial compliance" with the legal requirements.
Murphy ordered DHHS to file the implementation plan by
The judge also took a dim view of one of LePage's chief excuses for not acting on Medicaid expansion -- that the state cannot afford it. As a secondary argument, LePage has said his administration can't act until the Legislature appropriates funds to pay for the expansion.
While steering away from saying whether the Legislature needed to appropriate such funds, Murphy said that the administration needed to file the implementation plan regardless of whether the funds to cover the expansion were currently available. Advocates argue that the initial work can be funded with surplus funds within DHHS. The administration argues that new funding must be appropriated by lawmakers.
"The Court is not persuaded that the executive branch is excused from clear statutory obligations by the legislature's failure to follow through with legislative obligations," Murphy wrote.
This is a clear reminder to lawmakers that appropriating funds to cover the initial expansion work must remain a priority if and when they return to the State House.
Lawmakers have the vehicle to appropriate the needed funding in LD 837. The bill would allocate
Delaying Medicaid expansion, as LePage and
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