AUGUSTA – Uninsured Mainers who elect to drive without using their seat belts are racking up enormous hospital bills in the aftermath of automobile accidents and ratcheting up the cost of health care for everyone else in the state.

To illustrate the point at a Wednesday morning news conference, Dr. Erik Steele, chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, walked to the end of the massive conference table in the governor’s cabinet room and unfurled the hospital bill from a single patient.

It was 12 feet long.

“This is the hospital bill from a Maine Medicaid patient – it’s $78,000 from an unbelted patient who was injured in a crash in Maine and taxpayers paid for this patient,” Steele said. “I have several of these bills. … These tremendous costs can be prevented and must be prevented, if we’re really to get a handle on health care costs in this state.”

The graphic demonstration underscored the need for the new mandatory seat belt policy in Gov. John E. Baldacci’s $5.7 billion state budget that elevates the failure to use a seat belt from a secondary offense to a primary offense. Currently, a motorist can only be cited for not wearing a seat belt if the offense takes place after the driver is stopped for another violation, such as speeding. Under Baldacci’s policy, which analysts estimate will generate about $1.3 million in new budget revenue from increased fines, Mainers could be cited simply for failing to buckle up on the highway.

Surrounded by law enforcement agents, doctors, emergency services personnel and other representatives of the state’s health care industry, Baldacci said the move to make seat belt use a primary offense was consistent with his state health policy emphasizing the prevention of injuries and excessive hospital costs.

“We’ve established a record of success with Dirigo Health that we can save money for individuals, hospitals, taxpayers and businesses if we focus on prevention,” the governor said. “Tighter seat belt laws are one prevention tool. Tighter seat belt laws will allow us to bring down health care costs for taxpayers and businesses.”

Baldacci pegged the costs related to injuries sustained by unbelted Maine motorists at $32 million annually, with those expenses borne by employers, insurers, hospitals and taxpayers.

“We cannot afford the luxury of inaction,” he said.

Steele said a study conducted at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor indicated that of 11 patients treated at the facility with hospital bills exceeding $100,000, 10 were unbelted. The hospital census for trauma patients, who make up 20 percent of those referred to EMMC’s intensive care unit, continues to climb in the absence of a mandatory seat belt law.

“Our intensive care unit is running out of room. We’re looking at having to build an additional intensive care unit,” he said. “So these preventable injuries add a tremendous cost to Maine that goes way beyond the hospital bill and way beyond the simple economic impact on the patient. It has a tremendous impact on all of us. This is a real chance to do something to lower health care costs in the state.”

Reflecting bipartisan support for the new policy, Republican Sen. Christine R. Savage of Union and Democratic Sen. Dennis Damon of Trenton agreed it was now time to move Maine into the group of 20 states that already recognize seat belt violations as a primary offense. Damon said, like many Mainers, he had “come a long way” from his long-held position that seat belt use was a matter of choice.

“Being a rather independent Down East Maine Yankee as many of us are – if not in location then at least in spirit – I always claimed I could take care of myself and that any of the consequences which resulted in my failure to take care of myself were reflective of me,” he said. “I now firmly believe that that’s not the case.”

While Savage is among those GOP senators supporting the new policy, House Republicans expressed concerns over the governor’s decision to include the initiative in the state budget. House GOP Leader David Bowles of Sanford said that although not necessarily critical of seat belt enforcement, he would have preferred to see this policy, along with others like a Sunday hunting initiative, broken out into separate bills that would appear before their respective joint standing committees.

“We are troubled by the governor’s use of the budget as a vehicle for his policy objectives,” Bowles said. “We view the inclusion of this policy and others within the budget as an attempt to lessen the public scrutiny of the legislation.”

Dr. Lani Graham, acting director of the state Bureau of Health, joined others in the health care industry, including the Maine Hospital Association, the Maine Osteopathic Association and the Maine Medical Association, in encouraging support for the seat belt policy. Seat belt use in Maine, she said, has fluctuated from as low as 30 percent to as high as 72 percent during public awareness campaigns. She estimated overall average compliance in Maine at 59 percent as compared to 83 percent in primary-rated states.

“The humble seat belt is as good a piece of health care technology as [any] of the latest mechanical health care wizardry available,” she said. “It saves lives, prevents injuries and reduces health care costs. We just need to assure that Maine people use it, and that’s exactly the purpose of this legislation.”