Advocates for expanding involuntary psychiatric treatment programs are making another push to convince the Mills administration to apply for a waiver that would unlock federal funding.
If successful, the push to release more federal Medicaid funds for compulsory psychiatric treatment would join Maine with more than a dozen states, including Vermont and New Hampshire. The waiver would allow Medicaid to reimburse programs that provide outpatient psychiatric treatment to people who might refuse it and become a danger to themselves or others.
The man who killed 18 people in the Lewiston mass shooting was one of those people, according to his sister, Nicole Herling. Herling told the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee Monday that people who are unaware of their mental illness often go untreated, or cycle through hospitalizations or jail until they reach a breaking point.
"While not everyone with psychosis requires hospitalization, some — like my brother who experienced psychosis with anosognosia — do, for their own safety and the safety of others," she said. "We cannot wait for another tragedy to unite us."
Medicaid caps reimbursement dollars to providers with more than 16 beds to discourage the forced treatment and involuntary commitment that was prevalent decades ago.
But advocates for Maine's decade-old law say the funding restrictions outdated and are backing a bill that would force the state to apply for a waiver.
An official from the Department of Health and Human Services told lawmakers that the Mills administration is already seeking such a waiver, although it's more limited in scope.
A similar waiver request cleared the Legislature during the previous session with broad bipartisan support, but it was never funded.
