Lance Tapley of the Portland Phoenix is the most important investigative journalist working in Maine today. Unfortunately, the Phoenix does not get distributed up here in the wilds of Bangor. So, I'm a little late to point out (via Turn Maine Blue) this anguished year-end summary piece Tapley wrote two weeks ago. It expresses how Maine, with its nominally liberal Democratic governor, John Baldacci, along with dastardly national government have failed to address a variety of issues while paving way for the rich to eat up the poor. But I'll focus on just one that strikes home, the Dirigo Health program:
Everyone?s a neocon now
Looking back on state politics ? and forward
By LANCE TAPLEY - December 21, 2007
"Corporations have been enthroned. . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people. . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the Republic is destroyed."--Abraham Lincoln, 1864
In the eight years I?ve covered the State House for the Portland Phoenix, I?ve been struck by the depressingly constant themes: paralysis on tax reform; public aid for health insurance and heating oil that cruelly leaves many of the poor out in the cold; abuse of people in state institutions; deference by officials to companies menacing the environment; and the wastefulness, cronyism, and self-indulgence of politicians and upper-level bureaucrats....
Dirigo Health
THE ISSUE Baldacci has failed to insure the many Mainers without health insurance -- at present, 122,000.
THE STORIES In his first year in office, Baldacci made national news by getting the Legislature to adopt the Dirigo Health Plan, which would within a few years insure all the uninsured. It didn?t happen. DirigoChoice, as the insurance is called, now covers about 12,000 people [including yours truly], but most have switched from private insurance. There are close to as many uninsured Mainers now as in 2003, and as the country heads into an economic downturn, possibly a recession, the uninsured undoubtedly will increase in number.
Why has Dirigo failed? Put simply, it wasn?t funded, as I detailed in several stories. The working poor and many lower-middle-class Mainers can?t afford it. Maine politicians were not willing to reshape taxes to get more money to better subsidize Dirigo?s premiums.
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