BANGOR – Among chants of “laid-off workers need help now,” more than 35 people at a noontime rally here Tuesday urged Maine’s two U.S. senators to withdraw their support from a bill that would force unemployed people to pay more upfront for medical care.

The rally, sponsored by the Greater Bangor Area Central Labor Council, was staged to show the differences between two congressional bills that would change how laid-off workers pay their health insurance premiums under COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.

COBRA usually allows for the continuation of an employer’s health insurance coverage for up to 18 months if a worker voluntarily resigns from a job or is terminated for any reason other than gross misconduct. The worker pays the entire premium – both what was paid by the worker and by the employer.

But Tuesday’s discussion was more about making COBRA an unemployment benefit and how to pay for it. Competing measures being considered by Congress include provisions that would either have the laid-off worker pay the entire premium upfront and get reimbursed for it by the federal government, or have the insurance company seek the reimbursement from the government for most of the cost.

Participants at the rally said laid-off workers cannot afford to pay between $530 and more than $800 a month upfront for health insurance when they receive unemployment benefits of only $272 a week.

The COBRA payment for families of laid-off Dexter Shoe workers is $530 a month, while it’s $700 a month for former Saucony workers and $800 a month for laid-off Passadumkeag and Costigan workers, according to the labor council.

Under a bill supported by U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, which is part of an economic stimulus package being considered by Congress, laid-off workers first would pay 100 percent of their health insurance premium. Then the workers would show proof of payment at an area unemployment office and apply for a voucher that would be submitted to the federal government for reimbursement of the money.

“People can’t afford it,” said Pat McCoy, a laid-off worker from International Paper Co.’s Costigan stud mill. “It’s not something I can come up with out of pocket.”

Speakers for the crowd instead said they support a separate Senate finance plan, which also is pending in Congress. Under the plan, laid-off workers would pay 25 percent of their premiums upfront to their health insurance companies and get reimbursed for that amount by the federal government. The insurance company would be responsible for getting the remaining 75 percent of the cost directly from the government.

Also under the Senate finance plan, unemployment benefits would increase by 15 percent or $25, whichever is greater.

Maria Kingsbury of Dixmont, who has asthma, recently was laid off from the Saucony footwear plant in Bangor. She said she and her husband, Dennis, receive about $330 a week in unemployment compensation, but pay more than $700 a month for insurance.

“It costs $399 a month for my prescriptions alone,” said Kingsbury, 35, who also has worked in the state’s shoemaking, sardine-packing and wreath-making industries.

Felicia Knight, a spokeswoman for Collins, said the plight of the laid-off workers is disheartening, but the only way to give them any financial relief at all was for both Collins and Snowe to support the economic stimulus package. If any other measure is passed, such as the Senate finance plan, it wouldn’t be able to withstand filibusters promised by either political party, she said.

The economic stimulus package does have something in it that laid-off workers want, Knight said. Under the package, federal funding would be used to extend unemployment benefits by at least 13 weeks for anyone who lost his job after March 15, 2001, and who has exhausted state-funded benefits.

“This is the only way we’re going to get the 13 weeks of unemployment benefits they want as well,” Knight said.