Single payer system urged Common Cause celebrates advocacy

ELLSWORTH – The only way the Legislature will have the courage to pass a single-payer health care system to cover all Mainers will be if citizens believe in the cause and demand that it happens, state Rep. Paul Volenik told Maine Common Cause on Saturday.

Volenik has worked for eight years to get single-payer legislation through the Legislature. His efforts consistently failed, but with help of fellow Democrats he won approval this year for a major study of the feasibility and economic impact of a single-payer system in Maine.

The Legislature, however, failed to fund the study sufficiently. Volenik said the Maine Health Security Board has raised almost $35,000 for the effort in donations ranging from $10 from individuals to a collective $28,000 from nurses and midwives associations in California, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania.

Volenik said the board also has applied for a $200,000 grant from the Maine Health Access Foundation, created when Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine was sold to the for-profit Anthem insurance company. The group will hear in July whether it will get the grant, Volenik said.

The Health Security Board will put the feasibility study out to bid this summer and expects to report back to the Legislature by December.

“Your activism, your advocacy, will ensure this,” the Brooklin Democrat told the “Celebrating Advocacy” luncheon at the White Birches, attended by about 80 Common Cause members and supporters.

“Think long and hard of the consequences if [a] plan fails to ignite Augusta and Washington,” Volenik said. “Think long and hard of the consequences of yet another insurance industry victory over the people.”

The Common Cause gathering also heard a presentation on the landmark Maine Clean Election Act, but not before welcoming and honoring Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox and his wife, Phyllis.

The couple, longtime residents of Maine, were celebrating both their 65th wedding anniversary and Archibald Cox’s 90th birthday.

Although Democratic state Reps. Joseph Brooks of Winterport and Tina Baker of Bangor spoke twice as long about the Clean Election Act, it was Volenik’s 20-minute speech that roused the group to applause and support.

“Maine is poised once again to lead the nation,” Volenik said. “While our allies are growing in strength, we can’t do it alone. But with your help, we will win the basic human right of health care for all of us.”

Volenik criticized independent Gov. Angus King and Republicans in the Legislature who have thwarted the growing effort to create a single-payer health insurance program in Maine. The best Volenik and other supporters could do was to get the study legislation through and then only because Bar Harbor independent Sen. Jill Goldthwait broke a 17-17 tie in the Senate to win passage.

Brooks also criticized King for failing to recognize the need to make a bold change in the way Mainers get insurance. More than 100,000 residents have no insurance and untold others are underinsured or at risk of losing their coverage.

“[King] is no fan of single-payer health care,” Brooks said. “I don’t know what he’s a fan of.”

Volenik later praised the governor for ultimately allowing the feasibility study to be done so both supporters and opponents to a single-payer system could get some valuable information on whether it would work for Maine.

According to Volenik, Maine’s health care expenses are paid 55 percent by federal, state and local tax dollars and 45 percent by health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.

A single-payer system would require a governmental entity or a quasi-governmental agency to administer health insurance coverage and pay the bills. Volenik said the tax dollars now being spent on health care would be combined with a new tax stream, probably through the payroll tax, to raise the amount now collected by other means.

He said experts think the state could cover all of its citizens and save at least 5 percent in costs under a single system that would reduce overhead, eliminate profits and win discounts for drugs and services through group bargaining.

Mainers paid $4.7 billion in health expenses in 1999 and Volenik predicted costs would exceed $5 billion this year. Of the 1999 figure, the most recent available, about $400 million was paid to insurance companies for administrative costs and profits, Volenik said.

The single largest taxpayer contribution to health care costs in Maine comes through the federal-state Medicaid program, which covers the poor, disabled and elderly. Increasingly, Medicaid is being expanded to include uninsured Mainers who earn too much money to qualify for traditional Medicaid benefits but not enough to buy their own insurance policies.

Meanwhile, although many Maine businesses are facing premium increases of 20 percent to 30 percent a year for their employees, Maine’s insurance superintendent has warned that the individual market is at risk of collapsing if something doesn’t happen to stem the skyrocketing cost of health insurance.

“It is activism and advocacy of you and I that is finally overturning a health care financing system that is dominated by the drug and insurance industries, that serves their profits rather than serving your health,” Volenik told the Common Cause luncheon, “[and] a system that makes billions of dollars from withholding health care from you and I.”

Volenik, who cannot run for a fifth two-year term in the House under Maine’s term limits law, pledged that he would continue to fight for a single-payer system whether or not he returns to public service in the future.