BAR HARBOR – Gov. John Baldacci pledged Monday to work with Maine hospitals in the coming year to develop a health care plan for the state, but emphasized he wants his landmark universal health insurance bill approved this spring.

Baldacci, addressing a small business health care forum at the Regency Hotel, assured the audience of about 75 that his first-in-the-nation plan would not force Maine hospitals to close, as some hospital leaders have warned.

“That’s a red herring,” Baldacci said. “The sky is not falling. There are plenty of resources there” in the current health care system to keep all of the hospitals financially viable.

The governor said that once the Legislature passes his sweeping health care reform bill, he hopes to sit down with hospital officials and other providers to devise the state’s first statewide health care plan. Baldacci said he doesn’t want to fight with health care providers and hopes they can help craft a plan without being hostile.

Baldacci said antitrust rules would be waived in order to allow hospital officials to meet together to talk about revamping the system.

The statewide health care plan would reallocate the $5 billion Mainers spend on health care annually to ensure that both acute and specialty services would be provided in all regions of the state, Baldacci said.

Hospital officials “represent special interests … rather than the public good,” Baldacci said in questioning the validity of hospital concerns over his proposal. “I care more about people than institutions and brick and mortar.”

Baldacci was praised by numerous people at the forum for his bold first attempt to create a health insurance system to cover the estimated 180,000 uninsured Mainers.

However, criticism also continues to build over the way in which he would do it, particularly by setting a cap on hospital cost increases, imposing a “global” budget for Maine’s 40 hospitals, and imposing a 4.1 percent fee on private insurance premiums to underwrite the plan.

Doug Jones, president of Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, assured Baldacci that the hospitals were “going to find a way to support you.” But he underscored that the governor’s plan would underfund the state’s health care system by $600 million to $750 million a year – the difference between Baldacci’s proposed 3 percent cap and the projected annual 7.5 percent growth in hospitals’ real costs.

“How does that translate into a plan we can live with?” Jones asked.

Baldacci disputed the hospital numbers, asserting that hospitals did not take into account the bad debt and charity care they would no longer have to provide under his plan.

The proposal calls for insuring 57,000 Mainers in the first year of the plan. Baldacci said hospitals would see a significant portion of the annual $275 million in unpaid hospital bills reduced under his plan – and more as more people join the plan.

Another growing concern about Baldacci’s plan is the swiftness with which he’s trying to get it through the Legislature. He remained confident Monday that the 70-page bill would be approved by the end of the month, less than six weeks after he submitted it to lawmakers. But others, including members of his own majority party, were not so certain.

“There hasn’t been enough public involvement,” said state Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, after the governor’s talk. The plan “deserves it and needs it. We need more time than six weeks or eight weeks of public discussion” for such a far-reaching proposal.

Damon said he favors allowing the Legislature’s special committee on health care to meet throughout the summer to give all parties a chance to express both support and concern and make amendments to the bill. He said Baldacci could call the lawmakers in for a special session in the fall.