November 15, 2010 Letters to the Editor

11/15/2010 - From the Portland Press Herald

MAINE VOICES: It's time for Maine parties to get together on affordable health care

AUGUSTA - As the final votes are certified, many advocates in Maine will be greeted with a new landscape in Augusta -- a Republican-controlled Legislature eager to support the agenda sought by the first Republican governor in 16 years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph P. Ditre is the executive director of Consumers for Affordable Health Care.

We congratulate the new legislators and governor on their victories. We look forward to working together because there is much to be done, particularly regarding health care and health insurance reform.

As a mission-driven, nonprofit and nonpartisan research and policy advocacy group, Consumers for Affordable Health Care works to protect the rights of health care consumers in Maine.

We are committed to helping all Maine people obtain quality, affordable health care regardless of whether they are Republican, Democrat, Green, or independent.

To that end, we look forward to working with the incoming administration and the new House and Senate leadership to ensure that we continue to broaden the population with access to affordable coverage, without losing any of the protections consumers now enjoy.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in March of this year. The law prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to children and adults who have medical conditions (called pre-existing conditions).

The law also gives small businesses tax credits to make covering their workers more affordable. It helps seniors on Medicare to pay for their prescription drugs when their Part D coverage runs out and allows young adults to remain on their parents' insurance plans up to age 26.

These are just a few examples of the many important protections in the law. Polls show that when these specific benefits are explained the public largely supports the new law.

Recent polls also show jobs and the economy as the top issues of concern to voters, making efforts to repeal the health care law seem out of touch and ill-conceived. In fact, the more people hear what benefits are in the law, the more likely they are to support it.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, health care reform ranked fourth among issues tea party voters deemed important, with only 10 percent saying it was their most important issue. Furthermore, only 11 percent said a candidate's position on health care would be the deciding factor in how a tea party voter would cast his ballot.

We applaud the incoming governor's commitment to transparency and note that Maine has made significant progress in determining how best to implement the new law in an open, transparent and bipartisan process with meetings initiated by the Baldacci administration and the Legislature.

Maine has much ground to lose if the newly elected leadership were to simply scrap the months of work put in by these panels.

In particular these groups have studied and analyzed the creation of the state exchange, a new marketplace to provide consumers and small businesses with affordable health insurance choices. Exchange development is perhaps most vital to the affordability piece of the law.

It is up to the new governor to decide whether Maine or the federal government will design and operate the exchange.

We also heard much talk regarding the Dirigo Health Agency during the election. We look forward to continuing our work with Dirigo and helping to educate consumers and employers of the affordable options it offers.

We recommend that the agency be given a chance to succeed after just re-opening to new customers in August.

DirigoChoice, the agency's health insurance product for individuals, will not increase premiums in 2011, which is in stark contrast from other individual and group carriers in the state.

While the landscape and the members may have changed, the problems facing small businesses, working families, and single parents remain the same: How do we increase access to affordable, quality health care for the greatest number of Mainers?

That is a difficult question we will continue to work on answering -- but it will take the help of Democrats, independents, and Republicans alike to come up with pragmatic and effective solutions.

The time for political slogans and partisan bickering is over, now let's roll up our sleeves and get to work.

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