To the editor:
U.S. Census data states there are about 3,200 kids below the age of 5 in Aroostook County. Of these children, about 1,100 depend on SNAP (food stamps) to make sure they have enough food. In The County, 1 in 3 kids under 5 years old needs SNAP to eat, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
Right now, the U.S. Senate and House are trying to find a way to extend tax cuts to the richest Americans. They want to give the top 1 percent richest people $1.1 trillion in tax cuts. But they need to find those trillions somewhere, and they are looking at SNAP. They want to take SNAP money, money that goes to putting food on the plates of infants and toddlers, and give it to billionaires.
SNAP isn’t the only service that these politicians want to defund. They also want to pull funding for Medicaid (in Maine, it’s also called Mainecare). Medicaid covers healthcare costs for disabled people and the poor. Over 6,000 people in Aroostook need Medicaid to see doctors and fill prescriptions, according to DHHS. That’s 1 out of every 10 people in the County. These people are our neighbors, our co-workers, the folks we sit next to at restaurants.
Medicaid/Mainecare funding is important even if you don’t use it. Rural hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical services bill Medicaid, Medicaid pays them, so they make money and can stay open. Medicaid is the largest insurer in the US. If we want medical services to stay open in Aroostook, we need to make sure Medicaid can pay them.
Some politicians argue they’ll find money by uncovering Medicaid fraud. That’s a lie. There is some fraud in Medicaid, but not enough to cover what they want. We already had non-partisan experts rooting out fraud in Medicaid; Trump fired them. Trump replaced these watchdogs with Elon Musk’s Doge (a group so incompetent they accidentally fired nuclear weapons safety workers. Doge scrambled to unfire the staff but couldn’t figure out how to contact them. Oops). Make no mistake: To cut taxes for the super-rich, they will cut Medicaid and SNAP.
Jade Hopkins
Presque Isle
