I have two questions. I'd hope anyone making a stab at answering them would know more about healthcare reform than I do. In particular, I hope they'd know more about what has happened with healthcare in Maine.
First, some set-up.
The other evening I attended a benefit fundraiser for the cause of universal healthcare and
SB 840, California's pending (but for now moribund) legislation for Canadian-style government-funded healthcare.
At the fundraiser, local politico Lani Hancock stood up and made what struck me as a noteworthy passing comment about healthcare reform in Maine. To provide some background, Loni is a pretty reliable liberal-Democrat-leaning member of the California State Assembly, our version of the House of Representatives. Besides pushing healthcare reform, Loni is pushing her version of "clean money" legislation, to ensure that politicians execute the will of the electorate, that they aren't in thrall to corporate funding. In her address at the fundraiser, Loni linked "clean money" to authentic healthcare reform, that which benefits businesses, individuals, and families, rather than sweetening insurance and pharmaceutical corporations' bottom lines.
"After having a good clean money law on the books for six years, Maine finally enacted universal healthcare," said Loni. She didn't say any more.
Now, I've been a fairly active, involved healthcare-reform activist for about 1-1/2 years. I'd been passingly informed about healthcare reform before that, enough that a media blitz about "universal healthcare in Maine" most likely would have caught my attention. I hadn't heard word one about Maine's healthcare reform, and I'd be inclined to believe that if Loni mentioned it, it wasn't a "solution" heavily lobbied by insurance and drug concerns; in other words, it was substantive healthcare reform. My first question: Is there a consensus of knowledgeable Kossacks that Maine's healthcare reform package is sound--at least, "a step in the right direction," when it comes to ensuring universal access to healthcare and controlling healthcare costs?
Last spring, in contrast to whatever faint ripple the Maine plan generated, we had wall-to-wall media coverage of supposedly "daring, breakthrough" healthcare "reform" in Massachusetts--oooh, cue up the trumpets! We had wall-to-wall images of Republican Massachusetts governor, ol' Mitt Romney. A dashing-looking fellow Mitt is, in his tasteful business suit, his hair graying at the temples, but for a few weeks there, I got downright sick of him, shaking hands with other politicians and industry leaders over this new legislation. I was also nauseated by the slobbering, uncritical MSM paens to Mitt's "bipartisan" Massachusetts healthcare reform, that weren't actually no "reform," at all. It was legislation heavily lobbied by industry. It did zero to control healthcare costs, and it had little or nothing to do with peoples' needs.
I throw in the glorification of the Massachusetts plan as an example of the state-of-the art in the MSM's discussion about American healthcare--hence, the caliber of healthcare discussion in American society, at large. The MSM could easily have overlooked good-for-people healthcare reform, if, in fact, that's what has taken shape in Maine.
I Google'd "Maine healthcare reform" and I came up with this Dirigo health plan, which I guess is what Loni Hancock was talking about at the fundraiser. The web site isn't particularly easy to understand, but I think they're talking about healthcare policy that contains costs and ensures universal healthcare access by preserving for-profit health insurance--but reigning it in drastically. An analogy, as I understand it, would be the utilities market in this state. Pacific Gas and Electric--my utility--is a profit-making entity, but it's got a governmental agency whose whole job it its to ride herd on it, setting fair rates and dictating allowable competitive practices and such. My second question to knowledgeable Kossacks: do I understand the gist of the Maine plan?