Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a tea party Republican, is reconsidering his opposition to the Medicaid expansion in health care reform and has entered talks with the Department of Health and Human Services on the issue, the Boston Globe reported Tuesday. This comes after several Republican governors who opposed ‘Obamacare’ have decided to move forward with the expansion.
“We are in preliminary talks” with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledged Adrienne Bennett, LePage’s spokeswoman. “It’s very preliminary at this point. It’s premature for us to talk about anything.”
A Globe report last month highlighted how LePage, the sole governor in New England refusing to expand Medicaid, was going a step further and dropping current recipients from the rolls beginning in March.
By the end of the year, more than 44,000 Mainers, about 13 percent of the state’s Medicaid population, were scheduled to be dropped from the government-subsidized health insurance program.
Bennett said the expansion is still unlikely. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding Medicaid expansion, and we are not at this point moving towards Medicaid expansion,” she told the Globe.
