Letters submitted by BDN readers are verified by BDN Opinion Page staff. Send your letters to [email protected]
As if we needed more evidence that our healthcare system needs serious reform, Consumers for Affordable Health Care has released a new survey of Maine voters showing that almost half of Maine households have incurred medical debt in the past two years. Significantly, two-thirds of them were covered by insurance at the time.
Medical debt can lead to bankruptcy. A national survey showed that there are an estimated 530,000 medical bankruptcies annually. The results were not broken down by state, but by scaling to Maine’s percentage of the U.S. population, we can estimate that about 2,100 Mainers experience medical bankruptcy each year. It is clear that even those with insurance are not adequately protected against financial ruin.
We have known for more than a century that there is a solution to this problem: We need a simple, publicly funded, universal healthcare system. Legislation has been introduced in the current legislature to provide exactly that: “An Act to Create the All Maine Health Program.”
Under the program, the cost to the individual would be a sliding-scale premium replacing current premiums and cost sharing and it would be based on ability to pay. With the possible addition of minimal co-payments, this would be the individual’s only cost for healthcare and could be budgeted. There would be no deductibles and no surprise medical bills driving people into debt. Medical bankruptcies would likely become a thing of the past.
Please contact your legislators and urge them to support this desperately needed legislation. It would mean less risk and greater security in all our lives.
Michael Bacon
Westbrook
