Opinion:

Proposed Supplemental Budget Cuts
Threaten Quality Healthcare in Bangor

by Dale Hamilton, Mary Prybylo, RN MSN and Kenneth Schmidt

Your Bangor community healthcare organizations need to let you and our legislators know that we are deeply concerned about the negative impact of the supplemental budget proposed by Governor LePage. Should it pass, this budget will lead to all of us paying more for health insurance, hundreds in our area losing their jobs, and most importantly, to 14,000 people in our area losing health coverage through MaineCare. The hundreds who could lose their jobs in the Bangor area are real people – they are our friends and neighbors, just as are the thousands who can no longer obtain health care with their physician, dentist or mental health provider. They are someone’s mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, son, or friend. This isn’t how we do things in Maine.

In the budget as proposed, foreseeable direct cuts to Maine hospitals and health care organizations total more than $50 million. Indirect impacts will increase costs millions more. The changes, should they be adopted, will negatively affect our current capacity to treat all Maine citizens regardless of ability to pay. The proposed reductions could result in service cuts, cost shifts and layoffs severely affecting hundreds of thousands of people across Maine.

The Governor’s budget will cut about 14,000 people in our region from MaineCare health coverage. These people have no money to buy health insurance. They will be forced to get their health care in hospital Emergency Departments. Community health centers, community and public health organizations, area homeless shelters, law enforcement, municipalities and prisons will all absorb higher costs. Emergency Departments will be overcome as Mainers in need of basic health care services lose their doctor, dentist or mental health provider and have to go to Emergency Departments. EDs are a much more expensive and far less effective way to provide care. Our Bangor area hospitals cannot absorb these costs – they will be shifted to private insurance, and thus to businesses and then to all of us as employees.

There is no free lunch in health care – we all need it, and it all needs to be paid for. Our choice is this: do we pay less by keeping people healthier, or do we let people get sicker and obtain care in very expensive Emergency Departments or in hospital beds?

Here’s just one example of how the proposed budget will actually cost taxpayers more, not less. If a MaineCare patient goes to the Penobscot Community Health Care’s Dental Center, MaineCare pays $140 for the visit and the dental problem is fixed. If that same MaineCare patient ends up in the Emergency Departments, MaineCare (Maine taxpayers) will pay $500-$700 and the problem cannot be fixed because the Emergency Departments do not have dentists. The cost and problem will likely be compounded if the patient is given drugs to deal with the pain. The patient will have to go again and again to the Emergency Departments to get pain killers, costing taxpayers $500-$700 every time instead of paying just $140 to fix the problem.

Proposed changes will threaten the financial viability of health care institutions that care for Maine people. The growing costs of providing even more charity care will further burden already thin operating margins for Maine hospitals and health care organizations; organizations still awaiting nearly $400 million in MaineCare payments.

We urge policy makers to analyze what the impact of 65,000 newly uninsured Mainers really means to our healthcare infrastructure and total health care costs, and only then make truly informed decisions regarding the MaineCare program. Our Bangor health care organizations are working together to improve healthcare, keep people healthier, and keep Mainers out of the EDs and hospitals unnecessarily, while reducing costs. This is how to save taxpayers money, not by cutting people off MaineCare or cutting services.

Maine poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” Maine healthcare providers know that what we have and what we provide is critical to Maine people: quality, accessible healthcare for every Maine person who needs it, regardless of his or her ability to pay. We cannot provide this alone, however. Our patients, our employees and our capacity to provide what we have will bear too heavy a burden should the changes as proposed are adopted.

Dale Hamilton is Executive Director of Community Health and Counseling Services; Mary Prybylo, RN, MSN is President and CEO of St. Joseph Healthcare/St. Joseph Hospital; Kenneth Schmidt is CEO of Penobscot Community Health Care. All three organizations are based in Bangor.

For those inclined to voice their opinions/concerns to their state representatives, we have provided a link below with contact information.

Links

The Governor's Supplemental Budget

Contact Your State Legislator