John Martin launches fedupwithDanaConnors.org....sort of

Thanks, Walt. All the debate thus far has been about beer taxes, soda taxes and other taxes. I had not heard it framed that way to date. That was the point I was making, nothing more.

Dirigo Health is an abject FAILURE. This program is government at it's worst; arrogant, wasteful, poorly designed & run by incompetent individuals who can't get a job in the private sector.

No competent manager could justify the subsidy cost (read: taxpayer ripoff) per person of this program.

People's Veto is needed to put the nail in Dirigo's coffin.

Walt, you don't understand how the veto process works do you?

If the people's veto is successful the SOP comes back into play. Meaning no one is going to lose their health care if the veto succeeds. No one will have the funding for the health care they get through Dirigo right now cut off.

Link, have you ever bothered to ask why they couldn't afford it without Dirigo? and to head off the obvious answer, have you ever bother to ask why Maine's health care costs are so high and increase faster than the national average?

It's not about the large corporations - it's about the thousands of Maine small businesses, like restaurants and convenience stores, that will be negatively impacted by these taxes. While the effort may be supported by larger businesses who can afford to fundraise, in fact it's the small, mom-and-pop stores and restaurants that will be negatively impacted by this.

Didn't mean to bite your head off. While it's true that the public face of this campaign is not actively attacking Dirigo, there's no shortage of criticism of it from the supporters of that effort.

(David Hughes, for one, seems rather taken with the subject.)

And I don't think it's a stretch to say that the people who call Dirigo a "failure" are doing so because it makes is easier to justify a referendum that would remove funding that has been allocated to pay for healthcare for small business, children, and the elderly. That's a tough sell unless you can make people think the program is a disaster.

It's not. It's providing healthcare for small businesses and around 18,000 people that couldn't afford it before. If that's a "failure", then I'd like to see us "fail" some more.

I voted FOR Dirigo Health during my time in the State Senate and wrote an OpEd piece in support of it.
However, as any prudent small business owner would do, we've now enjoyed time to see how it worked... and it worked poorly.
It cost Maine Taxpayers nearly $77,000 per enrollee to underwrite. That's just not sustainable!
It'd be cheaper to just write $12,000 checks to each enrollee.
And, since we cover families of five at 300% of Federal Poverty, and over 90% of Maine families of five make less than $75,000 a year, Dirigo is very rich in our coverage.
While a critical piece of the original intent, the FED's never kicked in enough money, and we knew that might occur even then.
Now, it's being subsidized by yet another tax on employers.
Why does the Maine Legislative Majority hate all business so? I guess that's for another day...)
It's time to pull the plug on Dirigo Health and take another look at solving the problem... which isn't "who has health insurance"? That's merely a subset of the greater issue: How long and how well do Mainer's live? What should be our goal? It's really about Mortality... not health insurance, or even health care access!
I was wrong to vote for Dirigo Health. It's time to CHANGE (okay, call me 'Obama of the Right').
One of the reasons that Maine Employer's Mutual worked so well was that Maine small businesses were forced, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century and either cleaned up their act... or lost Woker's Comp. coverage.
There's a lesson to be learned from MEMIC to fixing the failed Dirigo Health scheme.

When Mr. Martin registers his new domain name, I'll register this one in memory of his "service" to the state of Maine.

Few have done so little with so much.

I meant stop taxing me will fight any new tax so if you want to get involved go to www.stoptaxingme.org

thanks

As a hard working father of several children, I resent the constant implications by the left that any opposition to taxation is actually opposition to what that taxation is intended to fund. Every time we try to reign in spending by the fat cat profesional government types, they roll out the fire department, the police department, and the trash collection and claim we oppose those services.
I am sick and tired of listening to rich left wing types complain about the state of the poor, or "hard working families", and then take money from those same people to fund their own sticky fingers. I can't believe that the liberals in this state are so dumb that they have forgotten basic math! I wonder how many of them realize that if you raise taxes to 100% that the state will collect - $0. Do you want to help people like me? Then stop taxing people who are just getting by! People are literally being taxed into the poverty bracket in this state! I have become convinced that liberals don't want to fix problems, they WANT TO CREATE THEM! They want more of us dependant on them, because that is where their power comes from.
I qualify for a number of assistance programs - but I refuse to collect anything from them. My children are my responsibility, and I will support them, I will feed them, if only the government would get out of the way and let me! Freedom is the key to prosperity - not some socialist utopia these rich left wing elitists seem intent on imposing on us. The veto will be supported by alot of hard working poor people who are sick of being slaves to a state that takes so much of our earnings away that we can hardly get ahead. Dirigo is a hog - everybody who knew how to count knew it wouldn't work. The left should learn that putting a bandage on a corpse might make you feel like you've done something, but it help anyone!

Link, you may know something about the people who are using dirigo, but you clearly don't know anything about the people who are paying for it...health insurance in this state went up through the roof thanks to government meddling in the first place. It is individual policy holders like myself that are bearing the brunt of this, and Dirigo has only made things worse. That is why this veto is going places...liberals don't realize that there are still a few people in this state that can count. (You know, simple logic like, if their funding plan worked, they wouldn't have to RAISE TAXES TO KEEP PAYING FOR IT) They understand that you can't provide for one group by skinning another group alive...cause nobody wins in the end. If they really cared about providing for people, they would allow us to be part of a bigger insurance pool like other states have done - or just permit me to buy insurance for my family out of state! Oh, wait, that would mean they couldn't have their hands in the cookie jar! My mistake.

Walt -

Your health care assertions are false. Maine has a health care system that is bankrupt. The pursuit of Dirigo to the exclusion of all else is a disaster. Democrats have made health care about politics, not affordability.

Maine's approach to health care has been a 15 year experiment that failed. that's it.

It is entirely reasonable to explore other options.

I don't really care about the tax veto thing.

Walt, if the veto is successful then the funding that was in place last year goes on. Those 18,000 people ( 4,000 on MaineCare, about 8,000 that had health insurance before Dirigo ) will still have Dirigo. No changes to a program that by any objective measure has failed to deliver.

The money that Dirigo is claimed to have saved us comes almost entirely from reductions that have nothing to do with bad debt or charity care.

The elderly don't use Dirigo. The disabled don't use Dirigo.

Young families that may benefit from Dirigo coudld have been helped from existing mechanism available to the MaineCare program are far lower cost than Dirigo.

Cost shifts from Medicaid/Medicare programs represents about 150 million dollars shifted onto the private payers of all types....unfortunately those private payers represent about 30% of the population. The more people we put on MaineCare the faster our health care costs will grow because MaineCare's re-imbursement rates are so low. The older our population gets the faster our health insurance costs will grow because of the low reimbursement rates of Medicare.

Taxing medical claims to lower the cost of health insurance cannot work. You tax things you want to discourage the use of, not the things you want to encourage the use of.

All government money ultimately comes from business. People buying and selling things, either on their own or through a company or indirectly through investment of some type. Making it harder and harder to buy and sell things at a price people are willing to pay just makes it harder and harder for government to take in money.

Maine's policies make sense if Maine was an island unto itself. We are not. Our people vote with their feet and their wallets every day.

You know, since I was originally posting my frustration with martin for suggesting that it was out of state corporate types that were supporting the veto and not maine people, and that they were doing it to take away people's health care, I guess I got a little carried away.

You see, I've been reading American History lately, and I seem to remember some guys who were really upset that their government imposed some kind of beverage tax without letting them have any say in the matter. They had names like Patrick Henry, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, etc. It seems that they claimed that such taxation was slavery! They were so upset that they started their own people's veto - only they did it with muskets. Can you imagine getting that upset over a tax on tea? What a bunch of simpletons!

Oh, and I think you are right about the fact that Maine isn't taxing people into the poverty level. I went over the taxes we have again - let's see, there's property taxes, (you know, the kind where you ransom your house from the government every year so that you can stay in it) then there's income tax (but that is only for rich people who make more than say $10,000 a year or so.) Then there is a 5% sales tax on luxury items like clothes, soap, shoes and such. Let's see, there's the snack tax for rich people who enjoy popcorn, the gas tax for rich people who drive to work, registration fees for rich people who own cars so they can go to work, phone taxes for rich people who have a phone, licence fees, etc. You know, I can't think of a single one of these taxes that people in the poverty bracket have to pay! What was I thinking?

"... who are trying to eliminate health care access for 18,000 working Maine families and kids....."

See, Martin is getting away with a lie here. I'd call it misleading but Martin knows full well that if the veto effort succeeds that nothing changes in regards to Dirigo. It goes on just as it has gone on with the SOP. Killing the tax does not eliminate health care access for 18,000 people. Saying that it does is just outright fabrication or misunderstanding. Now tell me, does anyone here think Martin misunderstands anything in regards to legislation he fights for?

Come on Wally, show us the full press release so we can tear it to shreds just like the last missive from Martin.