The bill would make some low-income immigrants, who are 21 or older, eligible for the program.
This would expand eligibility to potentially thousands of people who are ineligible for coverage under the federal Medicaid program because of their immigration status.
Advocates argue it’s a good investment.
“Our daughter is now a very healthy and thriving little girl,” asylum seeker Luc Samuel Kuanzambi said.
Kuanzambi says that wasn’t always the case.
She had a life-threatening congenital liver condition and was able to get a transplant.
“This future of hers would have been impossible without MaineCare,” Kuanzambi said.
Advocates say people currently not able to get full benefits could get emergency MaineCare, but that’s just for serious health problems.
“We work really hard to find financial assistance and we spend a lot of time with them, but often there’s not a lot of options for them,” Maine Mobile Health Program Behavioral Health Director Laura Valencia Orozco said.
This bill had a public hearing Tuesday afternoon.
One person, who submitted testimony in opposition, said, “We do not need to saddle Maine taxpayers with these costs when they are struggling to meet their own medical needs.”
“With some of the previous expansions of MaineCare, the federal government has born a lot of the cost,” Maine Center for Economic Policy Analyst James Myall said. “This would be entirely paid for by state funds.”
The Maine Center for Economic Policy is supporting the bill.
While a state analysis on cost hasn’t been submitted yet, he has an estimate.
“It will be probably in the order of like several million dollars, I think,” Myall said.
“It’s absolutely an investment in health care, but the cost of doing nothing is so much greater,” Maine Equal Justice Policy Advocate Alex Carter said.
Supporters of this idea argue many of the people who would become eligible for coverage already contribute to the economy.
“Immigrants are tax payers, and I think we need to remember that,” Carter said.
In a statement to CBS13, the Maine Policy Institute says, “State spending is already out of control. The last thing the state should be considering, or taxpayers should be subsidizing, is further expansion of the program to anyone, regardless of citizenship status.”
The group says that the program is intended for the truly vulnerable. It believes that state expansion data shows those covered under a recent program expansion are mostly childless, able-bodied and working-age adults.
