Razing
a house
of cards
The Dirigo Health plan is new law designed to expand health care coverage to uninsured Mainers.
We don’t debate creation of law behind closed doors in this democracy, but that’s exactly what is happening with Dirigo Health because the issues of accountability and cost have exposed raw nerves and discussions have passed polite.
Too bad.
Closed door meetings are more than plain wrong. They destroy public trust and diminish whatever rules emerge from secret discussions.
On Wednesday, Gov. Baldacci and Trish Riley, the principal architect of Dirigo Health, met behind closed doors with representatives of the Maine State Employees Association, the AFL-CIO and the Maine State Chamber of Commerce. Whatever was discussed will forever be hidden because the public was purposely excluded. Also purposely excluded was the 15-member legislative panel formed specifically to review Dirigo Health.
This is no way to craft law. Every person who has stake in this plan -and that is every Mainer -should be outraged by the secretive talks.
Dirigo Health, when it was first proposed, was tremendously unpopular with hospitals and insurance companies because it capped -supposedly voluntarily -hospitals’ annual cost increases and banned insurance companies from passing the Dirigo surcharge on to consumers. Hospitals don’t want to operate under caps and insurance companies most definitely want to pass costs on to consumers.
These groups met with the governor and the parties hammered out a compromise of shared pain last Thursday. We haven’t heard a peep from the hospitals or insurers since.
However, the deal designed to ease the pain of these two groups raised the pain of others. Specifically the AFL-CIO, business owners and the MSEA who now see the plan as more expensive for business and labor.
The governor has already bowed to hospitals and is likely to bend again.
So, where does that leave uninsured patients?
What about their pain?
The early calls to slam the brakes on this runaway Dirigo plan have gained greater urgency. Riley and Gov. Baldacci pledge to continue discussions with vocal stakeholders and present a plan to the full Legislature next week. The discussions won’t be a public process.
We question whether the plan will bear any resemblance to its original form or whether it will truly answer the demands of constituents.
This picking apart of Dirigo Health is like unstacking a house of cards. Every element of the plan is interwoven and retracting pieces to assuage clamoring special interests destroys the promise Baldacci made to constituents.
There is no shame in tabling Dirigo Health, erasing pressure to produce something -anything -by next week.
There is shame in propelling forward a plan that has been bent and twisted to meet business demands while sacrificing patient needs.
Once again, we urge the governor to give Dirigo Health a little time to breathe. The goal of providing health care to uninsured people is too important for patchwork lawmaking.
jmeyer@sunjournal.com
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