I was appalled at Sunday’s headline about MaineCare (“As it grew, MaineCare became a breaker of budgets“). Saying it’s health care that is breaking the budget is saying that health care is not a priority for the people of Maine. People will die. Health care is a priority, and we need to reframe how we look at this issue.

It’s not MaineCare that is breaking the budget, it’s largely that we are no longer taxing the wealthy and big businesses. It’s prioritizing tax breaks for Amazon over people’s lives. It’s prioritizing people’s giant vacation homes over a family losing their own small primary home because they can’t afford medical bills for their children. 

Offering baseline affordable health care to our disabled citizens, our elderly, our low-wage earners with families is an important part of every state’s budget. Not only are cuts to MaineCare devastating to people’s health, but they also increase health care costs for everyone else in the state. 

And making health care affordable saves money as well as lives. No country spends as much for as little as the U.S. does on private health insurance. Every time cuts are made to health care, the cost to the private sector goes up. 

The state spends money on a lot of things, and as we work to stay within the budget, we need to remember what is most important, what hardworking Mainers literally can’t live without, and prioritize those things.

Robin Elliott
South Portland