Action 108 ALL MAINE HEALTH (Dirigo!)
Background: On April 29, the national Medicare for All Act was introduced AGAIN to Congress. It has about 100 cosponsors in the House and 20 in the Senate. You can view the introduction on facebook (1). Very similar legislation was first introduced in 2003 and multiple times since then. “This transformative legislation would finally establish a single-payer national health program in the United States, allowing patients to seek the care they need, when they need it, without fear of financial ruin. It would also allow clinicians to practice medicine to the best of their ability, free from the crushing administrative burden, corporate second-guessing, and profit-driven conflicts of interest that plague our profession.” But as long as Republicans are in charge, there is little chance it will pass. There is a national organization of thousands of doctors promoting Medicare for All, Physicians for a National Health Program. You can find out about them through their website (2). PNHP has an outdated webpage for Maine (3) which shows 7 labor unions and ONE town in Maine endorsing the legislation.
However, the Maine affiliate (https://maineallcare.org) has much more up-to-date information! For instance (news to me) out of the 12 towns that signed a letter of support for Medicare for All in 2020-2021, 6 were in Hancock County! (Trenton, Bar Harbor, Brooksville, Surry, Brooklin, and Penobscot ~ WAY TO GO, Hancock Co!) One has to ask, why should Maine wait around for the Federal Government to get its act together on this critical national priority? MaineALLCare is ON IT! They have developed and published two Maine bills that address the need for a universal health care plan for Maine.
> LD 1269, Resolve, to Study the Costs and Funding of a Universal Health Care Plan for Maine. This bill asks the Maine Office of Affordable Health Care (4) to study how a publicly funded, universal healthcare system could work in our state. The report would be due by May of 2026. A one-page summary is HERE and the full bill text is HERE.
> LD 1883, The All Maine Health Act is a companion piece of legislation. If and when enacted, it would create the All Maine Health Program (AMHP). The provisions of this program have been outlined HERE (summary of the bill), HERE (the who, what and why), and the full legislative text is HERE. It is anticipated that the study referenced in LD 1269 would use the description in LD 1883 as a basis for the study. Like LD 1269, it was referred to Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services (HCIFS) Committee.
Actions:
(1) THE PUBLIC HEARING on both bills WILL BE WEDNESDAY MAY 14. 1 PM. Especially sought and effective are YOUR personal stories that illustrate why we need publicly funded, universal health care. These could be stories about unavailable or inaccessible care, exorbitant costs (of care or insurance), medical debt or bankruptcy, treatment delays or denials, etc. Personal stories are powerful and particularly important in helping legislators understand why we need the total transformation of our health care system that the All Maine Health Act represents.
(2) Contact your Maine legislators and tell them you expect them to support these two bills. By now you have your legislators on a convenient list, right? Contact us if you need the info!
(3) Call our Congress critters. It’s high time the US joined the civilized world with universal health care. Nuts to slashing Medicare/Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for billionaires! Support Medicare for ALL instead!
Urgency: TESTIFY ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON IN AUGUSTA OR ON ZOOM. Instructions are here: https://www.mainelegislature.org/testimony/.
Extra Credit:
(1) https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/videos/1818948822281514 The bill does not have a number yet. A press release is at https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-jayapal-dingell-hundreds-of-health-care-workers-introduce-medicare-for-all/ The text of the bill is at https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/TAM25280.pdf
(2) https://pnhp.org/about/
(3) https://pnhp.org/chapter/maine/
(4) https://www.maine.gov/oahc/