Just Ask Maine Business Owners How Well State Run Health Care Works: Initiative Filed to Repeal Hug
A business coalition in Maine appropriately called Fed Up With Taxes was formed to fight recent tax increases to shore up the state's subsidized health care coverage. It is collecting 55,000 signatures to repeal taxes that the Maine Legislature passed last month to bail out DirigoChoice, the state-subsidized program offered to small employers and individuals.
The taxes include a first-ever Maine tax on soft drinks, a doubling of existing levies on beer and wine and a 1.8% tax on health care claims paid by insurers and third-party claims administrators.
The tax battle comes nearly five years after Maine lawmakers passed what then was considered a pioneering approach to dramatically reduce the state's uninsured population, then estimated at 190,000. But the program has been lambasted by critics:
"It has been a colossal, expensive failure with the program providing coverage to only a small percent of the uninsured," Tarren Bragdon, executive director of the Heritage Policy Center in Portland (ME) told Business Insurance Magazine.
"It is costing $50 million a year to provide coverage to a very small number of people," said Chris Hall, senior vice president of the Portland (ME) Regional Chamber of Commerce. "The costs clearly are outweighing the benefits."
Just less than 13,000 people are now covered by DirigoChoice, about 1% of the state's population, and a fraction of initial state enrollment predictions.
As Washington lawmakers, insurance commissioner and governor consider a greater role for state government in health insurance, they ought to be mindful of two things:
- How much is it going to cost taxpayers? They need to do the math.
- Will it do what it is predicted to do? As Maine taxpayers are finding, wishful thinking is not always reality and there is no free lunch!
Don C. Brunell, President, Association of Washington Business (DonB@awb.org)
