I am most concerned about how the expected Medicaid cuts, recently enacted by Congress, will affect Maine’s most vulnerable adults. For many years, I served as an attorney for the Adult Protective Services Division of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services in Cumberland and York counties. I helped the department prosecute cases for the appointment of the department as the public guardian of incapacitated adults.

In most cases, these adults suffered from extreme dementia and had no family upon which to rely nor the ability to get safe housing, medical care and treatment without assistance. Other cases involved young adults who were intellectually disabled and whose families were unable to provide care. Many of these young people could not house, clothe and feed themselves, nor could they seek medical care.

Elderly adults were most often placed in nursing homes where necessary medical care would be provided in addition to residential care. Younger intellectually disabled adults were placed in group homes with their peers with 24/7 live-in caretakers. All of these services are prohibitively expensive and were paid for by Medicaid.

I expect that these Medicaid payments will be eliminated due to the recent passage of the “big, beautiful bill” and that the state of Maine will have to pay for all of these services in order to fulfill its statutory obligation to protect incapacitated adults. Otherwise, our most vulnerable adults will be homeless without anyone to protect them.

Daniel Boutin
Portland