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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Maine Challenge to Obama Healthcare Reform Fails Supreme Court Test

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Thursday, June 28, 2012   

AUGUSTA, Maine - Maine was one of the 26 states which filed suit challenging "Obamacare." In the wake of Thursday's Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, healthcare advocates and consumers reacted favorably.

Darcy Shargo, interim CEO of the Maine Primary Care Association, says the ruling reaffirms support for expanding access to healthcare, especially through Maine's community health centers.

"I think we feel pretty confident that, in the years ahead, Maine communities that don't currently have enough primary care are going to have better access to doctors and nurses and other healthcare providers."

Maine Attorney General William Schneider, who joined other states in challenging the law, said the Court protected the states' rights and prerogatives on new Medicaid eligibility requirements in the Act. "The expansion of Medicaid on the backs of state budgets through all-or-nothing bullying tactics was rejected by the Court," said Schneider.

Maine People's Alliance health care organizer Jennie Pirkl criticizes Gov. Paul LePage and Republicans in the Legislature for dragging their feet on setting up a state-run health insurance exchange that is part of the Affordable Care Act.

"Unless the Legislature reconvenes for a special session this summer, I'm not sure how we're going to get an exchange up and running by the deadline, which is January 1."

According to Shargo, the only disappointment in the ruling was the potential weakening of Medicaid expansion. She hopes the Legislature will address that when it sets about creating an insurance exchange program.

"I hope, in the context of looking at the exchange, that there could also be a good dialogue about the importance of trying to maintain those Medicaid expansions, so that this truly does have the impact that it's meant to have."

The Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank, has a different take on the law's potential impact. It released a statement saying, "...the Supreme Court has approved federal legislation that assaults personal liberty, costs $2 trillion and creates a massive expansion in entitlements."



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