I've sawed that board off three times and it's still too short

From The New York Times:

PORTLAND, Me., April 23 — When Maine became the first state in years to enact a law intended to provide universal health care, one of its goals was to cover the estimated 130,000 residents who had no insurance by 2009, starting with 31,000 of them by the end of 2005, the program’s first year.

So far, it has not come close to that goal. Only 18,800 people have signed up for the state’s coverage and many of them already had insurance.

[. . .]

Governor Baldacci said in an interview that when the Legislature enacted the Dirigo Health Reform Act in 2003, it gave him less money and more compromises than he had wanted. He said his administration had now learned more about what works and what does not.

His new proposals include requiring people to have insurance and employers to offer it and penalizing them financially if they do not; making the subsidized insurance plan, DirigoChoice, more affordable for small businesses; creating a separate insurance pool for high-risk patients; instituting more Medicaid cost controls; and having the state administer DirigoChoice, which is now sold by Anthem Blue Cross.

“We’ve got a reform package that takes Dirigo to the next level,” Mr. Baldacci said. “It takes the training wheels off.”

The program failed, as it was guaranteed to fail just like all other top down "solutions" to problems are doomed to fail.

So like a good politician the governor is trying to get the failed program more money and throw more of the coercive power of the state behind it.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is how a free and prosperous nation gets turned into a poverty stricken socialist hell. This is a hill worth dying on in terms of political opposition. Once the government is in a position to be the source of an essential service like health care the opportunity to reduce its size and scope without a bloody revolution is virtually eliminated.

This is why the political left is go gung-ho for it.