In June 2003, the Maine, USA Legislature passed a comprehensive health insurance plan, granting low-cost coverage available to all state residents by 2009. Through a semi-private agency, the state will provide coverage to uninsured residents, small businesses and municipalities and the self-employed.
Premiums are to be set on a sliding scale. For example, individuals making below $27,000 and families making below $55,000 will be eligible for reduced rates.
A watchdog group will be created to monitor hospital and doctor costs.
The bill passed the Maine House of Representatives 105 to 38, and the Maine Senate 25 to 8.
About 15,000 of the 140,000 uninsured have been covered by the program. The original project goals were to pay for the program with savings from reducing inefficiencies in the existing system and not raise taxes, while providing insurance to 140,000 people. This year the State raised taxes over 5% to help pay for this program and enrolment in the program is closed due to cost issues.
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or insurance:
“However strongly they resist it, our kids have to learn that as adults we need the companionship and love of other adults. The more direct we are about our needs, the easier it may be for our children to accept those needs. Their jealousy may come from a fear that if we adults love each other we might not have any left for them. We have to let them know that it’s a different kind of love.”
—Ruth Davidson Bell. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 3 (1978)
“For there can be no whiter whiteness than this one:
An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)