May 29, 2008 - 12:28am
A penny paid now is a doctor’s visit earned later
By Jessica Alaimo
Category: LocalTags: League of Young Voters, People’s Veto, Fed Up with Taxes, Health Coverage for Maine
Members of the Portland League of Young Voters don’t care if the cost of booze goes up a few pennies.
League leaders sent out an e-mail Thursday urging their members not to sign the people’s veto petitions that will be circulated by the Fed Up with Taxes coalition.
The coalition is headed by Chamber of Commerce members and is supported by out of state beer and soda corporations. Members include the Maine Restaurant Association, the Maine Grocers Association and the Maine Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association.
A new PAC, “Health Coverage for Maine,” has formed in response. It is headed by health care advocates and professionals. Thursday morning they will hold a press conference in Portland. Watch PolitickerME.com later in the day for details.
The new taxes on beer, wine and soda were passed to fund Dirigo, the state’s health insurance program. They will not be applied to local breweries and wineries.
The League supports the new taxes because they help 18,000 people get health insurance.
“These large scale corporations are meddling into local Maine business to keep their own prices low with no consideration for our state,” states the League’s e-mail.
The e-mail continues: “Plus, the Beverage Tax is aimed at helping folks under the age of 40 have access to cheaper health insurance in the future with a special pilot program! With 40% of uninsured Mainers under the age of 30, we can't afford to cut this tax!”
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I wonder....
I wonder if they read the actual law before they issued their email.
The tax has nothing to do with the reforms aimed at the under 40 crowd.
The veto effort is designed to leave those reforms alone.
It's not about the beer!
In 2003, when supporters were promoting DirigoHealth, they promised that the program would insure 130,000 uninsured Mainers within 5 years and would never require a tax increase for funding.
Today, 5 years later, only about 13,000 Mainers are insured by Dirigo, and the Legislature levied a $53 million tax to continue funding the program.
Dirigo is failing. It requires fundamental changes, if it must be kept at all. Out-of-touch pols and left-wind special interests choose to ignore this failure, and instead worship at the alter of DirigoHealth.
Dirigo is not the answer to our healthcare challenges. Patient-centered health care reform requires more private health insurance options and repealing costly regulations. It does not require yet another tax increase.
doctor
Physician is still widely used in its older, narrower sense, especially outside North America. In this usage, a physician is a specialist in internal medicine or one of its many sub-specialties
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