PORTLAND, Me. — Night after night, in the sharp autumn air, canvassers are knocking on doors across Maine in hopes of getting tens of thousands of poor adults insured through Medicaid. Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, has five times vetoed expanding access to the program under the Affordable Care Act. Next month, voters here will be the first in the nation to decide the issue by referendum.
But even in this liberal city, canvassers have encountered resistance from some as they stood on creaky porches and leaf-strewn steps to argue, as Lily SanGiovanni did the other night, that “health care is a human right.”
“My only question is where is the money coming from?” asked Michael Bunker, 35, a gym owner who spent 10 minutes debating the issue on his doorstep with Ms. SanGiovanni, a volunteer with Mainers for Health Care, the lead pro-expansion group. “I agree everyone should have free health care, it sounds great. But I can’t sign anything that’s just going to add to the federal debt.”
The referendum on Nov. 7 represents a new front in the pitched political battles over health care. Maine is one of 19 states whose Republican governors or legislatures have refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, and the other holdouts — particularly Utah and Idaho, where newly formed committees are working to get a Medicaid expansion question on next year’s ballot — are closely watching the initiative, whose outcome may offer clues about the salience of the issue in next year’s midterm congressional elections.
