Even after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, there are still some 44,000 adults and 16,000 children in Maine without any sort of insurance coverage. They were the focus of discussion for about 150 health care expansion advocates at the Augusta Civic Center Friday.
When a person without insurance gets sick, they can get treated at their local hospital emergency department regardless of their ability to pay. But advocates point out that it’s far less expensive to prevent a disease or illness than to treat it in a hospital.
Dr. Stephen Meister, a pediatrician at Maine General Medical Center, says he recently saw a patient who had been given a pay increase of a dollar and a half an hour, which had made her family no longer eligible for Medicaid coverage.
“We need to find a way to help the near-poor, and help this group of people who are moving from total dependence to total independence,” he says. “There has to be that step up.”
Meister believes that the state should take advantage of federal law and expand the eligibility for Medicaid, which he says would be mostly paid for with federal funds. By providing preventative care, Meister says the state could avoid higher health care costs in the future for both parents and their children.
Democratic state Rep. Drew Gattine of Westbrook, who chairs the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.
“Maine is a state that has not seen some of the positive impact on our rates of the uninsured that other states have seen. So I think Medicaid expansion is as important as it’s ever been, and I am absolutely sure there will be some bills moving this forward in the next session,” he says.
But Gattine points out that Republican Gov. Paul LePage has vetoed five different expansion proposals in the past, and expects that he would veto similar legislation in the next session. He says mustering a two-thirds vote to override a veto would be very difficult, as opponents have raised concerns about the future cost burden of Medicaid expansion.
But Meister says the governor’s comments about the importance of addressing the opioid crisis and providing treatment to those who are struggling with addiction may be a sign of hope.
“Therapy for substance abuse treatment is paid for through insurance. So the only way we are going to be able to do that is through the expansion of Medicaid,” he says.
But expanding Medicaid is only part of the solution, says Barbara Leonard, the incoming president of the Maine Health Access Foundation, which sponsored the conference.
“Expansion of Medicaid is one answer. What this conference is also about is ensuring that even when people have coverage that they have the other things they need to have access to health care,” she says — things such as transportation to and from their health care providers.
Several speakers stressed the need for providers in Maine to make themselves aware of the various provisions of both the Medicaid system and its companion Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which covers children even when their parents are not covered by Medicaid.
It’s estimated that several thousand Maine kids who don’t currently have coverage could be eligible under the CHIP program.
