Kittery Maine echo ~ Governor Paul LePage plays politics with healthcare

Seacoastonline.com The Portsmouth NH Herald ~ an echo letter to the editor

Paul LePage is going against the will of Maine voters and the State's legislature, that voted five times to support Medicaid expansion ~ but the LePage administration will not comply with the law.

Maine's Governor Paul LePage is playing politics again, against the people of the state who legitimately voted for the expansion of Medicaid. The federal government is all set to send its share of the money, approximately $300 million,, but only after Maine contributes its share, about $30 million. Governor LePage is challenging the legislature to find the money when he's well aware that there is currently about $128 million sitting in the "rainy day" fund, from which the $30 million could easily be appropriated.

Who wouldn't invest $30 million to gain $300 million, easily kick starting the expansion of Medicaid to so many people waiting desperately for this healthcare? It's bad enough that a percentage of these people have to work for that healthcare, when it should be a right and not a privileged to be earned. That's another requirement that Governor LePage gladly instituted, along with many other states, given a green light by the punitive Trump administration and and its Republican lackeys in Congress. 

When will those Republican-controlled states and the federal government finally unshackle healthcare in our country from the yoke of ideology and allow it to become what it always should have been ~ a right, not a privilege. 

Larry Etscovitz, Kittery, Maine