AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - Maine Gov. Janet Mills said she will allow a bill to boost state Medicaid payments to nursing homes to become law.
The Democrat had been holding the bill since June over concerns that it could jeopardize federal Medicaid funding and that the Legislature had not allocated enough funding to fully cover payments, the Portland Press Herald reports.
In a letter to the Legislature’s budget-writing Appropriations Committee, Mills said that the state’s Department of Health and Human Services would be responsible for ensuring that the payments go towards the wages of front-line nursing home employees.
“(The bill’s) funding should most appropriately go toward supporting wages of workers who are most directly involved in the care of those residing in nursing facilities, not for administrative costs or increases in executive leadership compensation,” Mills wrote on Monday.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.