To the editor:
Tuesday, May 3, four of us from Aroostook County, traveled to Augusta to attend the hearing on a bill to provide a single-payer health care system for Maine. It was one of the most gratifying experiences of my recent political activity. So many people showed up to testify in support of the bill, LD 1397, that the opposition disappeared from the room as it came time for their testimony.
At least that is the way it seemed to those of us who remained to testify for the bill. One lone opponent who appeared to be an insurance lobbyist showed up after testimony closed and asked to be permitted to speak. He did, and that proved to be a fitting closure to the testimony because he did not address any of the specifics of the bill, and all he did say served to convince us that he had not read it.
Following is the testimony I gave on Tuesday. It addresses some of the issues the bill would help to alleviate.
I am a retired teacher with a Maine State Retirement pension. When I signed up for Medicare in 2003, the only additional coverage I could get for which the MSR System would pay their share was Aetna, the company providing my health insurance at the time of retirement. I started paying about $350 a month from my own pocket, and the premium went up every year. At some point I needed surgery and was hospitalized for several days. When the bills started coming in, I discovered that I did not have the supplement plan I thought I had, but a catastrophic insurance plan that also provided some coverage for prescription drugs which I didn’t need. Aetna did not pay any of the co-pay expenses for the surgery and hospital stay. By this time my premium was up to about $450 a month. With the state’s share, my insurance was costing over $700 a month.
Not only was I getting ripped off, the state was, too. As a taxpayer, I was cheated twice to pay for Aetna profits. The whole experience was a nightmare with trying to figure out if I should blame the insurance company or the providers who kept harassing me with bills.
When the collection agency threatened me, I paid the bill to get some peace of mind, but my trust in some of the health care providers involved in that has never recovered. I don’t intend to recover any trust in for-profit insurance. It is foolish for any of us to trust our health to companies whose only motive is profit. And it is foolish to trust providers who are encouraged by the way they are paid to compromise quality of care and to waste money for unnecessary procedures.
I dropped Aetna coverage and picked up an Advantage plan. I don’t trust them either. They start you out cheap and then increase the premiums by 100 percent or more every year. The first one stopped offering the product I had after about two years. The one I have now started out with a payment of $0 per month and increased the premium to $50 per month the first year. I don’t even know how to calculate that percentage. These companies are getting subsidized by the federal government; we are cheated again.
When I first began my experience with a non-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield decades ago, our insurance life was simple and worry-free. Faced with a life-threatening illness of one child that went on for several years and involved several hospital stays, we all — the patient, his family, and the providers — could focus on the medical problems of the illness, not on what we would have to sacrifice to pay for the treatment. We need a payment system that returns us to that simplicity, effectiveness, and trust.
This bill is especially important in view of the Health Care bill, LD 1333, that was already voted out of committee as ought to pass and is especially bad for seniors, rural areas, cancer patients, and people with other preexisting conditions. See the BDN editorial last Thursday. Please support LD 1397, and get for-profit insurance companies out of the health care business.
Alice Bolstridge, Ph. D
Presque Isle
