Earlier this week, a Virginia judge declared a portion of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, virtually guaranteeing that advocates on both sides of the issue will carry the fight over the ACA to the Supreme Court. This is essentially the same outcome of the lawsuit that Maine’s incoming attorney general would have joined to oppose the law with other states. With this latest development, Gov.-elect Paul LePage has the opportunity to change his previous position in favor of such a move, one that would unnecessarily cost Maine taxpayers time, energy and money — all too precious commodities in our current economic environment.
As economist John Maynard Keynes once famously said after taking criticism for changing his views on an issue, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” Now that conservatives in Virginia have successfully opened the path to the Supreme Court, the incoming LePage administration should drop its plan to join in challenging the law.
There seems little Maine can do now to affect the trajectory of the legal challenge as it makes its way through the judicial branch. Let’s instead focus all of Maine’s resources crafting real solutions to one of our biggest problems: out of control insurance costs that cripple our economy and leave too many Mainers uninsured.
The irony is that the high cost of Maine’s Dirigo Health program was in part due to the insufficient numbers of participants. A large volume of participants is required to effectively spread the risk (and therefore the cost) of insurance. This is the same issue that the ACA’s so-called “individual mandate” seeks to address. We can’t have it both ways.
Just four years ago, the health insurance cost to my company of 115 employees, headquartered in Portland, was around $224,000 per year. Now, it is $367,000. Our renewal increases have averaged 15 percent per year, leaving us little choice but to reduce coverage to rein in cost. This is a lose-lose situation and one that isn’t sustainable. We can’t be taken backward by not addressing this staggering trend.
I’m not alone. Health insurance costs have eaten into the bottom line of every business in this state, and that hurts everyone. Businesses all over Maine need a governor who will lead us forward to a solution, rather than bogging us down in a fight grounded in political ideology. We simply can’t afford it.
Like regulatory streamlining and lowering energy costs, lowering the cost of providing health insurance for Maine business is vitally important to improving our economy. Lower health insurance costs would mean more jobs, a lower cost of living, and fewer uninsured.
Regardless of what happens in courts down the line, the provisions of the act began to phase in this year and will not go away anytime soon — another reason not to waste precious resources by joining an unnecessary lawsuit. Maine must continue to prepare for implementation of the law or the federal government will step in and do it for us. I can’t imagine anything would upset the governor-elect more than that prospect.
In fact, Maine has the opportunity to control its own destiny by implementing a key provision of the ACA as soon as possible: creating an insurance exchange that controls cost and expands consumer choice through free-market competition (yet another ideological irony). To expand on that idea, the governor ought to throw his administration full force into joining a multistate compact that would allow lower-cost insurance providers from other states to do business in Maine.
These are just two recommendations put forth last week in a draft joint report by the Maine Advisory Committee on Health System Development, which includes members of the LePage transition team and the Steering Committee on Health Reform.
Taking the law we have and building on what is good and learning from our own mistakes and successes is the best thing we can do for Maine people. We want solutions, not a fight over the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. We are smarter and better than that.
Rosa Scarcelli is CEO of Stanford Management, an affordable housing provider in Maine and three other states. As a Democratic candidate for governor, she gained a strong following in the 2010 primary. To see more, go to www.rosaformaine.com.