AUGUSTA – The Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance unveiled a draft plan Monday that officials said is designed to serve as a guide in the state’s quest to bolster good health and prevent disease.

Proposed goals include linking physical health and mental health with a focus on depression, curbing substance abuse including smoking, and combating obesity as a way to counter diabetes.

“Our state does have a health care cost crisis,” health office chief Trish Riley said in a prepared statement.

“Mainers spend more of our income on health care than residents in 45 other states. Our rates of health care use are high in large measure because we have high rates of chronic illness – cancer, heart disease, lung and respiratory disease, diabetes and depression.

“These chronic illnesses account for 75 percent of our health care spending and much of this disease and disability is preventable. If we are a healthier state, we will need and use less health care,” Riley said.

A final version of the draft plan, which has been months in the making and is subject to further public comment through Dec. 2, is expected next month.

Assessing the status of public health in Maine, the draft plan cites advances in recent years in areas including infant mortality and teen smoking. But it also says that Maine suffers from high rates of cancer and asthma.

The draft plan, which says that individual action is essential, proposes that Mainers sign “a confidential contract” with their doctors or a family member to cement resolutions to improve health.

The plan also recommends high priority be given to projects that pledge to spend 1 percent of the project’s cost to support public health.

A one-year interim state health plan, called for by the Dirigo Health Reform Act that was enacted in 2003, was issued in July 2004.

“Over the last month, there has been considerable attention in the media about Dirigo Health reform’s voluntary efforts to reduce health care cost growth in Maine. Nearly $44 million has been saved and those voluntary efforts will continue,” Riley said Monday.

“But today we are issuing a call to do even more to bring down the cost of health care, to make our citizens more productive and to improve the quality of our lives by committing together to make Maine the healthiest state in the nation,” Riley said.

The 2-year-old Dirigo Health program, championed by Gov. John Baldacci and challenged by some of his most outspoken critics, was designed to provide universal access to health coverage for uninsured and underinsured Mainers. Part of its funding comes from savings resulting from voluntary spending caps by hospitals and other cost-control efforts.

On the Net: www.dirigohealth.maine.gov.