Medicaid Cuts Are Part of a Larger Battle in Maine
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
AUGUSTA, Me. — At a town hall meeting in the rural western part of the state last week, a woman asked Gov. Paul R. LePage if he could confirm a worrying rumor she had heard: that poor out-of-staters flock here because the public benefits are so generous.
Yes, he could. “If you come across from New Hampshire at 8 o’clock in the morning, by 4 o’clock in the afternoon you will have subsidized housing in the state of Maine,” the governor declared. “We need to change the rules.”
Mr. LePage, a first-term Republican whose destitute childhood is a well-known piece of his biography, is seeking to do just that. Calling the state’s entitlement system “a runaway train,” he has proposed contentious changes, including some of the most drasticMedicaid cuts in the nation.
BOSTON CAPITAL
The state’s big Medicare experiment
Hospitals Adopt Drug Industry Sales Strategy
In northwest Indiana, Carrie Sota visits five or six doctors' offices every work day as part of her new sales job.
Carrie Sota, of the University of Chicago Medical Center, pays a "sales call" to Dr. Amit Joshi, a family doctor in Orland Park, Ill. (Photo by John Zich/USA Today)
But Sota isn't selling the physicians on a prescription drug or a medical device. She's promoting her hospital — the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Sota is one of four employees the academic medical center has hired in recent months to make "sales calls" on physicians in the hope that they will refer more patients to the hospital. "We are trying to build meaningful relationships," said Sota, who was previously a saleswoman for a small medical device company.
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