After 60 percent of voters in Maine voted Tuesday to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare, the state's Republican governor said Wednesday that he would not expand the program until it was fully funded by the state's legislature, the Washington Examiner reports. In a statement released Wednesday, Gov. Paul LePage said that "credit agencies are predicting that this fiscally irresponsible Medicaid expansion will be ruinous to Maine's budget."
Under the Affordable Care Act, states that expand Medicaid coverage have 100 percent of their costs paid by the federal government for the first three years of expansion. Federal government support would then phase down to 90 percent. Although Maine would receive $525 million in federal funding, the conservative Maine Heritage Policy Center estimated that the state would pay more than $100 million on Medicaid expansion costs by 2022.
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