A Series of Unfortunate Events: Maine’s Medicaid program’s skyrocketing costs, higher taxes, underpayment of health providers and perpetual budget shortfalls result in health care rationing.

Read the full report | As Congress and the Obama administration debate reforms for the nation’s health care system, they would do well to study Maine’s experience with Medicaid. Maine’s unsustainable Medicaid enrollment, now at 23 percent of the state’s population, has created a perpetual budget crisis, higher taxes, increased costs for medical services, underpayment of health care providers, debts from years of unpaid Medicaid bills and rationing of care for the people on Medicaid. Maine’s misguided experiment with a massive expansion of the Medicaid program should serve as a warning to those who would do the same on the national level because uncontrollable costs and health care rationing will be the result.