How much money have Maine taxpayers spent on MaineCare for noncitizens?
It’s an important question. But the more pressing question is why my producer didn’t tell me to button up my shirt before filming this video. Someone remind me to get a mirror in the new studio. Anyways…
The question of how much money Mainers are spending on “free” healthcare for noncitizens is virtually impossible to get answered honestly in the corrupt mafia state of Maine.
The Mills Administration has not been forthcoming with that kind of transparency. Or really any transparency, for that natter.
Even when asked by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, the Mills Administration contorted the plain meaning of the request and conspired to paint a false picture of how much Maine has spent on noncitizen MaineCare since 2019.
In simple terms: Mills officials took the entire balance of MaineCare money spent on noncitizens, removed the largest part (i.e. MaineCare for non-citizens 21 and under), and then submitted a list of “Emergency Medicaid” line items drawn from an even narrower pool of noncitizens.
This is kind of like when your wife asks you how much money you gambled away in Las Vegas, and you tell her just $500 because that’s what you put into the slot machines, and—technically, by your personal definition—the $10,000,000 you wagered on the Patriots wasn’t gambling because you had a tip and it was a sure thing and you’ve got a system and that’s not gambling.
According to the records we obtained under the Freedom of Access Act (which we reported on last night), the Mills Administration effectively re-wrote the oversight questions, fudged the numbers, cut off a bunch of the data, and then fudged the numbers again.
So the most important question is: What are they hiding?
Here’s why the current conflict between Maine and the House Oversight Committee should matter to all Mainers:
* MaineCare is the biggest welfare program in the state. SNAP (aka Food Stamps / EBT) accounts for roughly $400 million in welfare spending, all of it federal through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. TANF (aka cash assistance from the EBT card) accounts for about $180 million per year, with $108 million coming from state sources versus $71 million from federal sources.
But with Medicaid/MaineCare, we move from the millions to the billions.
* MaineCare is Maine’s biggest ticket spending item, accounting for ~$4.3 billion in FY 2023, 72 percent of which came from federal sources. Because the federal match on Medicaid spending is so high, politicians have little incentive to rein in the program. Indeed, all the incentives point toward growing the MaineCare rolls.
But here’s the catch:
* MaineCare for noncitizens comes directly out of Mainers’ pockets — there’s no federal reimbursement. The Feds don’t pay for noncitizen MaineCare.
* That means every dollar Maine spends on MaineCare for noncitizens is dollar we can’t spend on our failing schools, crumbling infrastructure, or underfunded crime-fighters.
Hypothetically speaking…
* If — if — the Mills Administration was trying to pull a fast one on the federal government by slipping some noncitizen MaineCare bills into the U.S. citizen MaineCare bills, then Maine could soon find itself in a massive budgetary crisis. This is exactly what happened to California when “accounting error” resulted in $500 million in noncitizen Medicaid costs getting shoved onto the federal side of the balance sheet.
* And if — if — the Mills Administration did illegally bill the federal government for noncitizen Medicaid costs, then they probably wouldn’t want to give a fulsome and honest response to the House Oversight Committee’s request for data on such spending. Kind of like the response they did give…
* And if — if — the Mills Administration did break the law by pushing noncitizen Medicaid costs off on the federal government, perhaps anticipating that it would never become a problem under President Kamala Harris, then you might see the Attorney General of Maine send out an omerta directive to DHHS employees telling them not to talk to any lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office or the Justice Department.
* And if — if — the Mills Administration did wiggle the Medicaid numbers so that Uncle Sam took on more of the MaineCare burden than he legally should, you might find some top Mills officials expressing fear of a congressional subpoena…
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
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