The ACA works
Like so many others, my wife and I moved from Boston to Maine in 2013 for the improved quality of life. We didn’t want to raise our newborn daughter in a crowded and expensive city, but rather a beautiful, peaceful place surrounded by a community of caring people. We moved to a quiet town in the midcoast and haven’t looked back.
I quit a high-prestige job with good pay and benefits and we picked up, between the two of us, three part-time jobs here in Maine. One of our biggest costs was health care. We made too much for public assistance, but none of our jobs provided benefits. We paid out of pocket over $750 per month, or $9,000 a year — about a quarter of our total income — for coverage from a national, for-profit provider.
Last year, I went on the Affordable Care Act marketplace website and was able to get a new, better plan through Maine Community Health Options, a local, non-profit insurance provider. I went from paying $750 a month to $70. My premiums went down ten times. And my deductible and co-pays went down, too.
We were scraping by before we enrolled in the ACA. Now we’re a lot more comfortable. And you can be, too. The deadline for enrolling for 2015 is the end of February. Take my advice and go to enroll207.org now and get your family covered today.
Will Ikard
Newcastle
Name change won’t draw tourists
We see again, in a Jan. 19 column by Robert Lilieholm, the idea that changing the name of a wood lot on the Penobscot River is going to draw thousands of tourists to Northern Maine (“In the Katahdin area, a national park can transform a region we take for granted.”) And, again, this proposed national park in northern Maine is being compared to the most popular national parks in the nation, when we should be comparing it to all 56 of them. Will this scheme really increase the draw of Baxter State Park and these views of Mt. Katahdin because of a new name for the region?
We’ve heard all this before about a new national park with very little assurance it will work, and, if it doesn’t, we’re stuck with the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres to supply our forest products industry and this loss of tax revenue.
I don’t know who Mr. Lilieholm is listening to who takes the Katahdin Region for granted, but he should stop listening to them. Instead, please listen to those of us who value this part of life
Jeffery Gifford
Lincoln
Yes to new middle school
I am voting yes for a new Camden-Rockport Middle School. Yep, the price tag is a big number, and yes, it will increase my taxes. However, my taxes are going up due to school related costs one way or the other.
I’d rather they be invested in a new structure that addresses the needs of students, staff and community, and will last 50-plus years. Versus my tax dollars being thrown away on an old structure, with numerous deficiencies and problems, to keep it limping along for another year. Rest assured, this building is done. Kaput. It’s time is up.
The current middle school needs attention to the tune of a few million dollars right now. And it will continue to need a few million dollars each year for a few more years. After all those millions are invested to keep the school “adequate and safe” for habitation, we will then still need to build a new school. By then the building will desperately need replacing. Who knows what that replacement cost will be – $28 million? Or $38 million? It won’t be lower than now, that’s for sure.
Let’s do it while borrowing rates are at historic lows, before a crisis forces our hand (like with Rockport Elementary School). Join me in voting yes for the new middle school building project. Yes, it’s needed. No, our student body is not decreasing (rather it increases, every month. Just ask the principals). Yes, all options have been examined and discussed over the past year and a half in a very transparent, public process.
Vote yes on Feb. 10 at the Rockport Town Office.
Heather Mackey
Rockport
Stand together against terrorists
The shock, rage, horror, fear and sorrow that we all may have felt in the weeks following the terrible events in France leave us wondering what we can do. What can we do in the wake of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market, the murder of innocent people in the name of a perverted and hateful ideology?
We must mourn with the people of France and with the Jews of France. We must open our hearts in solidarity and know that their loss is our loss; the attack on them was an attack on us. “Je suis Charlie” is not just a slogan. These were attacks on all those who value democracy, freedom of expression, and respect for human life.
We must all stand together against those who would attack us and all that we stand for. While we must fight with all our strength against terrorists, while we must do everything possible to protect our communities, we must not ourselves fall into hatred or bigotry. Those who murder in the name of religion, who kill with God’s name on their lips, desecrate the name of God; they desecrate the name of Islam and the name of all religions. In the face of that desecration, we must remind the world that all people are created in the image of God.
We must stand in solidarity with all our brothers and sisters: the Jews of France, the Muslims, the Christians, all the French people, and all peace-loving people everywhere. Our hearts are broken in sorrow for those who have lost loved ones; and our hearts are firm and proud as we stand together in the name of freedom and humanity.
Rabbi Natan Margalit
Adas Yoshuron Synagogue
Rockland