It is, and consequently easy for some big city dirtbag to waltz in here and really screw things up...like legalizing pot, bear baiting and gun control.
As a microcosm laboratory, with only 1.5 million population, it's also pretty easy to crunch the numbers. With their handiwork, the Hillarybots wreaked horrible damage on the already poverty-line population.
Specifically, what exactly happened to Obamacare, i.e., the benign changes?
?
This all happened way before Obamacare. But we also have an analogous failed experiment to that....The wonderful Dirigo Health Plan!
It was to be administered by the private sector (Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield) and was intended to cover all the uninsured....many of whom lost their coverage due to the market destruction of 1993.
It also collapsed of its own weight and, in its death throes, was subsequently put out of its misery by the Republicans.
What do you do with the 80 million on Medicaid? Are HSA's the answer for them or for low wage workers who really don't have that much discretionary income or the need for tax advantages? HSA's are limited in their use.
Actually, I sort of covered that in an earlier post. "Medicaid" is generally administered by the states and is repackaged with a different name in every case. (ours is MaineCare)
I would want it privatized, block grants, sliding scale premiums (subsidy based on income) with unsubsidized premiums being equal to the regular market....but the benefits not quite as good. (to push them into regular affordable coverage) Everybody pays some level of co-pay.
Only the truly needy would get the fully subsidized premium, unlike now, where we have working people using the medical-welfare benefits.
One more advantage I didn't mention is; the providers would now be compensated at market rates instead of the pittance paid by MediCaid. As a result, "cost-shifting" would be reduce (hopefully the practice will be banned by Commissioner Price)
HSAs are the ultimate in patient involvement, but are not for everybody. I expect $250 to $500 deductible to make a big comeback.
A large percentage of the population is on the government dole in one form or another. Maine is tenth in the country receiving federal aid as a percentage of their general revenue, 35.3%.
“States with heavy reliance on federal grants-in-aid tend to have a combination of modest tax collections (reducing the denominator) and sizable low income populations (correlating with greater per capita reliance on Medicaid, housing assistance, and other low income and poverty relief programming, and with a greater share of federal education support),” said the Tax Foundation.
28% of the adult Maine population are on Medicaid along with 34% of the children.