Here is a video of Eliot speaking at Waynflete School about the economic problems that Maine is currently facing and what we can do to turn the economy around:
Posts Tagged ‘Dirigo’
Maine Wellness – Lower Cost Healthcare for Maine
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Maine’s rapidly rising annual expenditures for healthcare are crippling Maine’s working families, who pay too great a portion of their wages for healthcare, and are breaking the backs of Maine employers. High healthcare and insurance costs are one of the most important factors making it difficult to live and do business in Maine.
We can bring healthcare costs under control in Maine by providing essential health-care services for all Maine citizens through Maine Wellness, a new statewide framework within which coverage and care will be provided at a price that Maine businesses and taxpayers can afford, while preserving individual choice and the important relationships between patients and caregivers.
The Maine Wellness framework will be based on these three principles:
- All Mainers should have access to essential health care services.
- The program must be financially sound and sustainable.
- We will reward healthy behaviors and pay for healthy outcomes, de-emphasizing payments for procedures as much as possible, because many of the diseases we pay to treat are preventable.
Our program will borrow from the highly successful efforts undertaken by Cianbro, Hussey and other large Maine employers, who have succeeded dramatically in controlling costs and providing incentives for people to stop smoking, to lose weight and to take better care of themselves. Maine Wellness will be built on the foundation of Maine’s strong system of non-profit hospitals and committed physicians and caregivers.
BLOG: The Supplemental Budget is a Travesty
Monday, December 21st, 2009However much we might sympathize with the tough jam in which Governor Baldacci finds himself, there is no excuse — none — for the failure of leadership that the new supplemental budget represents.
Governors are elected to face the music and to lead the state, in good times or in bad. This is a bad time, to be sure, and the state government needs major surgery . . . maybe even an amputation or two.
But instead of facing the music and proposing the kinds of fundamental changes we need to make Maine work again, the Governor’s supplemental budget avoids the tough calls, relies on the most transparent gimmickry and fails the test of leadership.
Here are just a few of the issues that I have raised that the new budget fails to address:
- We need to authorize charter schools, measure teacher performance and pay for innovation, quality and efficiency in pre-K-12 education.
- We should merge our community college and university systems, so that we can better prepare our kids for jobs in Maine and in the knowledge economy at costs we can afford.
- We ought to reduce the number of non-profit organizations under contract to DHHS from 7,000 (!) to a more rational and manageable number that will deliver needed services at less cost.
- Let’s put an end to mandatory vehicle inspections, a leftover program from days when cars were not nearly as safe and reliable as they are today.
- It’s time to come to grips with the runaway costs of health care in Maine by creating a new framework that provides access to essential health care services for every Maine citizen at a cost that we can afford. (Does Governor Baldacci really believe that the new federal legislation will cure this problem for us?)
Instead of proposing the kinds of major surgery that the state government needs, the Governor’s new budget prescribes the political equivalent of sugar pills:
- More across-the-board cuts (one of the worst cop-outs of all), including three more government shutdown days. (At this rate, we might as well opt for a part-time government.)
- Tooth Fairy gimmicks like a “new” program to collect overdue taxes and hoped-for but uncommitted additional revenues from Uncle Sam, whose printing press is about to be turned off.
- Robbing Peter to pay Paul by making transfers to the General Fund from special funds like the state employees health insurance fund (thereby adding even more to the $3 billion in unfunded liabilities), the workers’ compensation fund and other cash balances in special-purpose funds. (This makes it look like the Governor learned budgeting from the University of Maine System.)
- Passing the Buck by delaying payments to towns and cities.
- And in a Shell Game that constitutes perhaps the worst example of budget shenanigans, the Governor proposes to make up the last big chunk of what is now estimated to be a $438 million shortfall by “borrowing” $93.5 million from Other Special Revenue Funds on June 30 and then paying it back 24 hours later on July 1. (This would be as if you or I paid our overdue credit card balances with another credit card.)
This budget puts our bond ratings at risk, perpetuates all of the structural deficiencies that caused the problems in the first place and is the strongest possible argument that could be made for a BRAC-type process of government reorganization, a proposal that I made in my announcement speech.
We’ll see what the legislature does with the travesty of a budget that the Governor has turned over to them, but nothing so far suggests that the political parties that got us into this mess are going to get us out of it.
BLOG: My Vision for Health Care in Maine
Monday, October 26th, 2009The median U.S. household income has decreased 3.6 percent this year, yet health insurance premiums are projected to increase 9 percent nationally. In Maine, Anthem wants a hike of 18 percent. This outrageous news comes on the heels of a decade (from 2000 to 2009) when health insurance premiums in Maine rose 4.6 times faster than our household incomes!
Something is terribly, terribly wrong. Yet, notwithstanding the tireless efforts of Senator Snowe to achieve meaningful reform at the federal level, the health care debate in Congress appears to have sailed right past the most important point. We need to stop arguing about who pays and start thinking about what we are paying for!
A recent story in the Bangor Daily News reported on a new, low-cost health care plan that has been organized by a group of Rhode Island physicians.
“I’d do this tomorrow . . . ,” said Maine’s own Dr. Michael Clark of Damariscotta. “To be able to deliver care to my lobstermen and carpenters and all the small businessmen . . . The big excitement is not to get a few more bucks per person. It’s to deliver care that aligns with my values and my conscience, and that is the care that our patients want.”
That is exactly the kind of care that we ought to be able to provide to everyone in Maine. And when I am governor, we will do that.
Whether we like it or not, and whether we realize it or not, we are all paying for each other’s health care today – and we are paying far, far too much for it. We are all paying high prices for unnecessary visits to hospital emergency rooms; we are paying billions of dollars in advertising, overhead and profits to health insurance companies; we are paying billions more to make up for the shortfalls in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements; and we are paying for expensive treatments and remedies for conditions that could have been prevented.This is an unnecessary handicap on Maine’s working families, who pay too much and sacrifice too much in wages for health care, and it is a burden that is breaking the back of Maine employers, for whom high health care costs are one of the most important factors making it difficult to do business in Maine.
The Dirigo health insurance program was an important attempt at reform. It signaled Maine’s intent to make essential health care services accessible to all. It was well-intentioned, but it just didn’t work as intended. It covers too few of those who need coverage, and it does so at too high of a cost. We need to replace it with something better and more cost-effective.
We also need to lower Maine’s high Medicaid expense, which is way, way above the national average, primarily because of unusually broad eligibility and a scope of services that is far beyond what is available in other states. Instead of programs that aren’t working and insurance coverage that is beyond our means, we can fashion a broader program that provides access to essential health care services for all Maine citizens at a price that Maine businesses and taxpayers can afford.
We can make health care in Maine work . . . for all of us. To do so, we need a focused strategy based on three important principles.
- First, all Mainers should have access to essential health care services. We need to protect people from the ruinous economic consequences of unanticipated illness, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in our state and in the country, so adequate coverage must include coverage for catastrophic illness. We must not forget that the reasons why Medicaid coverage in Maine is so broad and why we conceived and enacted the Dirigo program were good and sound reasons; we are compassionate, generous and decent people in Maine, and we should not desert those principles.
- Second, however, our program must be fiscally sound. We need to draw bounds around what we can afford to provide. We no longer can afford to indulge our very best instincts – our compassion, generosity and decency – without regard to what it costs to do so.
- And third, we have to stop paying for procedures and start paying for good health. We can develop a program that learns and borrows from the highly successful efforts undertaken by Cianbro, Hussey and some of Maine’s other large employers; one that builds on Maine’s strong systems of non-profit hospitals, committed physicians and caregivers, and one that incentivizes and pays for healthy behaviors and healthy outcomes. Many of the diseases we pay to treat are preventable. We need to create incentives for people to stop smoking, to lose weight and to take better care of themselves. That is the only way that we are going to bring costs under control, and it is the only way as a society and as a community that we will be able to afford broad access to essential care.
Maine can work. Providing high quality, affordable health care for every citizen is one of the biggest levers we have to lower the costs of living and doing business in Maine . . . and it is one of the most important ways in which we can make sure that Maine works for all of us.
BLOG: Government VFM
Monday, September 14th, 2009I am a trustee, a director, of a group of mutual funds that invests billions of dollars in bonds issued by state and local governments. I just spent a long and difficult day in a meeting in which we reviewed those investments and the finances of the states and cities that have issued those bonds. Times are tough all over America. Everyone is looking for VFM — value for the money.
The Maine Sunday Telegram fired a shot across the bow of Maine’s gubernatorial candidates yesterday, and voters should pay close attention to how those of us who want to be governor respond. The editors want to know how we propose “to change the size and scope of state government to adequately meet [Maine's] needs.” That’s a hard question, but it’s the right question.
The next 10 years will comprise the single most critical decade in Maine’s history, one filled with both risk and promise. We must respond to two great challenges.
First, we need to create thousands of new jobs and restore growth and incomes by literally rebuilding the foundations of our economy. We need to get Mainers working again.
At the same time, we have to resolve an enormous structural budget deficit by reducing state spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. We will need to make far-reaching changes in the way we govern ourselves and deliver public services in Maine so that Maine works right again.
We’re not alone. Most states are facing the same kinds of challenges, some with deficits that are even proportionally bigger than ours. But no other state has the same tradition of solving difficult problems with grit and ingenuity that we have. No other state has Maine’s unique civic culture that leads us to compromise and solution far more often than to loggerheads and division. No other state has Dirigo (I lead) as its motto.
Dirigo needs to mean something in Maine again. Once it does, we can put Mainers back to work, make Maine work right again and show America how to fix government.
The editors are right. This campaign will be a leadership test, as it should be.