News coverage

Here’s some of my first ink in the Camden Herald.

Jane Andrews also wrote a quick blurb about Dr. Walker and me:

Walker, 48, a diagnostic radiologist at Waldo County General Hospital, has been serving his first term in the House, on the Committee on Health and Human Services. He proposes to cut the state’s 8.5 percent income tax back to 4 percent and says the highest income tax in the northeast is a damper on expansion of economic activity.

O’Brien, 29, a writer and certified education technician who has been working at several part-time jobs to make ends meet, has lived in Taiwan, England and Sweden and says he would like to see this nation adopt the universal health care those nations enjoy. He wants to raise minimum wage and create sustainable jobs and development.

I'd like to clarify that I am advocating for universal single payer health insurance. Everyone pays in, everyone is covered and most important, it is not-for-profit.

In a February 18 op-ed piece in the Camden Herald, Dr. Walker spoke of two health care bills, which he supports:

1.) LD 1760: An Act To Restore Competition to Maine's Health Insurance Market

2.) LD 1047: An Act To Lower the Cost of Health Insurance.

Basically, these bills attempt to establish versions of high-risk insurance pools, state-subsidized coverage for people insurance companies decide to exclude, usually due to pre-existing conditions or age. Insurance companies love high-risk pools because they shift the responsibility of caring for the sick onto taxpayers and the state, leaving them to cover the people least likely to need medical care and allowing the insurers to make even more excessive profits.

Speaking of excessive profits, here are some statistics of the yearly compensation health care insurance CEOs raked in 2005:

William McGuire, United Health Group (parent of United Healthcare) $124.8 million

Howard Phanstiel, PacifiCare, 3.38 million

Edward Hanway, Cigna, $13.3 million

John Rowe, Aetna, $22.2 million

Larry Glassrock, Wellpoint, $25.0 million

With skyrocketing insurance premiums and deductables sometimes hitting five-diget figures, is doling out subsidies to millionare executives really the best use of our tax money?