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.
UPDATE Dirigo policies have been sold by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a for-profit company with no incentive to promote a competitor. Baldacci recently announced that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a Boston nonprofit, would take over Dirigo sales.We may be screwed. The missus and I fall into a very narrow cross-section of people who can get a slight discount on Dirigo, so we can just barely afford it. Now, they want to jack up rates despite jettisoning the hated Anthem, who has been operating the program under contract with the state's Dirigo agency. I've been campaigning for this move ever since Dirigo came online. But now we're in a situation where if our bill increases even just a few percent, we'll have to go naked without insurance again and probably be shut out of Dirigo forever.
THE FUTURE? One would think that because a nonprofit doesn’t require a profit, Dirigo prices would decrease. But Baldacci aide Trish Riley says that under Harvard Pilgrim premiums may go up, just less than if Anthem still ran the program.
It gets worse: DirigoChoice is now not accepting new subscribers. It is starved for money. It was Baldacci’s sop to liberals, and it looks like a fraud.
This is a deeply disappointing situation. It seems like the idea is to drive out current subscribers after closing Dirigo to exactly what it needs--new subscribers. Thanks, Governor, for standing so firmly behind your state's struggling contingent, part-time, & creative workers.
I used to be quite supportive of Baldacci and Dirigo, and Dirigo has helped us, though it has always been not quite good enough. Now I've had it Baldacci, and we may be forced out of Dirigo.
The Tapley article is full of tons more of Maine Ugly 2007. The Democrats cowering under the oil dealers who demand their cut of LIHEAP funds as if Tony Soprano was running the show just has me writhing as well.
But wait! There's more! Baldacci will demand tens of millions of dollars of cuts from Maine's neediest citizens as a result of predicted new massive budget shortfalls. It looks like people with physical and mental injuries and disabilities requiring support, services for the poor--the usual powerless targets--will be the ones hardest hit. Just click through to the link and read the comment, you'll see who I mean.
Today, the Bangor Daily News reports that it's "efficiency" these cuts are intended to serve:
Baldacci: More efficiency needed in ’08
By Mal Leary, Capitol News Service - Monday, December 31, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
AUGUSTA, Maine - Gov. John Baldacci says 2008 will be the year state and local governments reorganize to be more efficient and save money or it will be the year when many programs at all levels of government will be cut or eliminated.Nope, can't mention that there is an upper crust around here that does have the resources to chip in. My own block has a cul-de-sac full of very expensive riverfront homes. Couldn't those citizens be asked to return a small portion of the gifts they've been getting for years now from Bush, the Republicans, and the Democrat "no tax" puppy dogs, like Baldacci, who enable these horrors?
"There won’t be any tax increases," he said last week. "So the options will be administrative reorganization and streamlining state government, county government, local government and school administrative units, or it’s going to be painful service cuts."
The governor said he is still working on his supplemental budget proposal that he plans to send to lawmakers in the second week of January. He said the budget plan will continue the $38 million in curtailments he has made in the first budget year into the second.
No, cries Lance Tapley, these elite holders of economic power cannot be challenged by politicians properly called both "neoconservative" and "neoliberal" at the same time, because of their,
...radical dedication to corporate interests. While neoconservatism is most notorious in foreign policy (muscular imperialism, which critics say follows a corporate agenda), and while neoliberalism is most notorious in international economics (pro-corporate, free-trade government policies), Baldacci fits the domestic definition for both words: tax-cutting, tax-break-giving obedience to corporations; and, in practice, neoconservatives/neoliberals often have some liberal social values, since such values have become the corporate-class norm...It's not been a great year here for the little guys, and there is no one at home to help us but ourselves.
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