It was billed as a way to help Maine's 128,000 uninsured receive health insurance.  Taxpayers were promised that their taxes would never go up because of it.  Maine's Dirigo Care was supposed to be a model for other states to follow.

With big government programs, what is supposed to happen rarely does.  Remember my Amtrak blog a few weeks ago?  Amtrak was supposed to turn a profit in two years, but today it has cost taxpayers over $40 billion in subsidies since its inception.

Dirigo Care is following a long line of failed big government programs.  Not only has the program only reached 4 percent (or 5,000) of the uninsured, costing Maine taxpayers a whopping $164 million, but the cost of the program has skyrocketed, forcing the legislature to compensate with higher taxes.

These new taxes are causing quite a stir, too.  So much so that a referendum measure to repeal the taxes received twice as many signatures as it needed to appear on the November tax.