(The Center Square) — A supplemental budget is stalled in the Maine Legislature as lawmakers wrangle over how to fill a projected $118 million gap in the state’s Medicaid program.
On Thursday, the state Senate deadlocked over the $121 million stop-gap spending bill as Democrats and Republicans continued to fight over MaineCare spending and other public benefit programs.
On Tuesday, the House voted 113-27 to enact the bill. The Senate initially voted 31-2 to advance the measure, but the spending plan failed in a subsequent vote when Republicans voted against the package.
Senate President Mattie Daughtry, D-Brunswick, told reporters Thursday night that the supplemental budget was dead after several attempts to approve the spending package. She said legislative leaders will need to go back to the negotiating table to devise another plan to prevent deep cuts in health care spending.
Gov. Janet Mills criticized Senate Republicans for their “refusal” to support the bipartisan agreement on the supplemental budget, saying it is “harmful for Maine health care providers and their patients.”
“Providers have said loudly, and clearly, that this stalemate is endangering their finances and will impact care for vulnerable people all around our state,” Mills, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Yet instead of paying hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care providers what they are owed, Senate Republicans have put them at even greater risk.”
Republicans voted against the spending plan after pushing unsuccessfully to add work requirements for Medicaid recipients and other proposed reforms.
“We made it very clear that we are not going to bail out a welfare program that is failing,” state Sen. Matt Harrington, R-York, said in remarks on Thursday. “One that we have been saying for the last two majority budgets was going to fail without fixing the underlying problem.”
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services started withholding and delaying payments to hospitals, pharmacies and other health care providers because of the shortfall.
Under legislative rules, the measure must pass the House and Senate with a two-thirds supermajority, or the bill would not become effective for at least three months, which would further delay MaineCare payments, state officials said.
The Mills administration attributed the $118 million gap to several factors, including an increase in MaineCare enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic and changes in federal policy that expanded eligibility.
Other factors include the lingering pinch of inflation and workforce shortages that have driven up costs for health care providers, MIlls administration officials said.
