Sara Gideon’s Health Care Agenda
Ending the Influence of Big Drug and Insurance Companies and Expanding Access to Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Mainers
The COVID-19 crisis has underscored the immediate need for Mainers to have access to a basic human right — quality, affordable health care. In the first few months of the pandemic, 14,000 Mainers lost their health insurance due to job losses, resulting in a 16 percent spike in the state’s uninsured rate.
As Mainers look to Washington for solutions during this unprecedented public health challenge and economic strife, Senator Collins and her Republican colleagues have been working to repeal the Affordable Care Act and jeopardize coverage for Mainers. In addition, Senator Collins has taken more than a million dollars from drug companies and the insurance industry, and she has voted repeatedly against measures to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Mainers shouldn’t have to choose between being able to visit their doctor and purchase necessary medications or putting food on the table. That’s why Sara is running to make health care affordable for all — bringing down the cost of prescription drugs, expanding access to health care, and protecting people with pre-existing conditions.
During her time as a state legislator in Maine, Sara pushed for expanded access to health care, including essential reproductive health care, and she cracked down on drug companies with inflated prescription drug costs, while also ensuring that protections for people with pre-existing conditions remained in place. She helped write the “Patients First” package that capped the out-of-pocket cost of insulin and protected patients from surprise medical billing, and she sponsored a law that will help small businesses access health insurance coverage.
She is now ready to take this fight to Washington, where she will push for bold measures that prioritize Mainers over Big Pharma and other large special interests.
The Affordable Care Act expanded coverage to millions of Americans, particularly in Maine, which has seen a nearly 30 percent drop in the uninsured rate since the law’s enactment in 2013. In 2019, over 70,000 Mainers received coverage through the law’s marketplace.
In addition to expanded coverage, the ACA solidified protections for the 225,000 Mainers with pre-existing conditions, as well as protections against charging seniors for basic preventive health care such as vaccinations. The law also included provisions allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26, and it banned lifetime caps on coverage.
While many Mainers have enjoyed these benefits, high medical costs, waste, and other problems persist. Unfair treatment of people based on their race, gender identity, education level, and income are far too prevalent within our health care system, and the COVID-19 crisis has further exposed and compounded these issues.
Instead of working to address these problems, Senator Collins has voted at least a dozen times to repeal or undermine the ACA. She would have allowed insurance companies to return to the days of discriminating against individuals with pre-existing conditions — making health care less stable and secure. Even in the middle of a pandemic, Republicans in Washington are pushing forward with a lawsuit to overturn the entire ACA — a lawsuit that wouldn’t have been possible without Senator Collins’ decisive vote for the Trump tax bill.
As Speaker in Maine’s state legislature, Sara understood the importance of the ACA and worked to maximize the law’s benefits for Mainers, advocating for Medicaid expansion under the law, which voters passed in 2017 but was ultimately implemented and funded under Gov. Janet Mills’ and Sara’s leadership. Further, amid attacks on the ACA from Senator Collins and the Trump Administration, Sara passed state legislation to preserve the bill’s benefits for working-class Mainers.
Sara is now running to build on these successes and further expand protections for Mainers. She will increase coverage options and reduce costs by allowing Americans to choose to buy into Medicare through a newly created public option, while also preserving the choice for those who prefer their private insurance plan. This public option will reduce health care costs for Mainers by allowing the federal government to secure lower prices for services with hospitals and health care providers while increasing competition with private plans. Additionally, Sara plans to increase the generosity of premium tax credits available to purchase coverage and expand eligibility while strengthening cost caps to ensure Mainers spend less on premiums and deductibles. Sara will also ban surprise billing and advance innovative delivery system reforms aimed at further reducing costs and increasing quality of care, such as alternative payment models which incentivize care coordination for Mainers with chronic conditions.
Skyrocketing prescription drug prices have been a primary catalyst of our country’s growing health care cost problem. In fact, no other country pays more for prescription drugs. In Maine, drug prices ballooned by a whopping nearly 60 percent between 2012 and 2017. This caused a troubling domino effect, forcing a growing number of Mainers to either dangerously ration potentially life-saving medications or forgo filling prescriptions altogether due to cost. Nearly a third of Maine’s residents have had to stop taking their prescribed medications due to high costs.
Challenging the status quo of our current health care system is especially difficult because of the huge influence of Big Pharma’s lobbying and advertising efforts. The industry spent over $2.5 billion since 2010 on lobbying alone and its trade group operates with nearly a half-billion dollar budget. Senator Collins has benefited from this status quo, having received more than $1.6 million in funding from drug and insurance companies.
Senator Collins’ repeated attacks on the Affordable Care Act also threaten the closing of the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole.” Since its closing, Maine seniors have saved more than $87 million on their prescription drugs. Senator Collins has also voted on numerous occasions in favor of drug and insurance companies, including voting twice against cracking down on secretive “pay-for-delay” deals, which help keep cheaper generic drugs off the market.
As Speaker of the state House, Sara brought Democrats and Republicans together to advance a comprehensive set of prescription drug reforms in 2019 in order to address the rapidly increasing cost of prescription drugs in Maine. The reforms additionally set out to:
- Expand transparency in drug pricing information through a state-mandated annual report that will force large drug companies to explain drug price spikes;
- Improve access to low-cost prescription drugs through a state program that would work to safely import less expensive prescription drugs from Canada;
- Create the Maine Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set prescription drug spending targets for public paying entities and make recommendations to reduce drug costs; and
- Protect drug consumers from unfair corporate practices that lead to inflated costs.
As Senator, Sara will work against the interests of Big Pharma and implement legislation that will:
- Allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices;
- Place caps on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for seniors;
- Put an end to “pay-for-delay” schemes that have kept prescription drug prices high.
In the interim, Mainers need immediate relief. To that end, Sara also supports the creation of a federal importation program to help give Mainers access to lower-cost prescription drugs.
The coronavirus pandemic has had unprecedented and likely long-lasting effects on families and communities across Maine. Frontline workers have bravely continued to do their jobs and serve their communities throughout this crisis, despite the ongoing dereliction of duty from the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington. However, many of these workers have been putting themselves and their families at risk due to a lack of personal protective equipment. At the onset of the pandemic, Maine received only 5 percent of the N95 masks it requested from the federal government. And while the state has worked to meet the gap by distributing nearly 2 million masks to date, many health care providers are still waiting to receive equipment.
As Maine’s House Speaker, Sara has worked to combat the pandemic by collaborating closely with Governor Mills to pass an emergency response package for the state, which created an $11 million COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund for the health and economic needs of Mainers. Sara also co-sponsored and passed a law that gives state and local officials greater flexibility to support Mainers impacted by the virus.
Sara believes that we need to mobilize far more resources from the federal government in order to beat this pandemic. We need to guarantee that everyone who needs to get tested can get tested. Sara will boost resources for the creation and distribution of a vaccine, ensuring that everyone gets protection. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted Maine’s racial and ethnic minorities. Sara plans to use this moment to confront long-standing health disparities both for our rural communities and people of color by investing in public health infrastructure, expanding access to testing, supporting telehealth options, increasing funding to community health centers, and making targeted investments to address the social determinants of health. Sara will also provide meaningful relief to workers through measures such as expanding paid family and medical leave, expanding access to SNAP benefits, and increasing funding for school meal programs.
As one the most rural states in the U.S., Maine must bolster its rural residents’ access to health care. The state’s rural population faces higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and chronic disease. Rural hospitals save lives and are critical to these communities — not only due to the services they provide, but also because of their key contribution to local economies. Across the country, these hospitals are struggling to stay afloat, with 128 closing since 2010. As a result, rural residents, including Maine’s, have been forced to travel farther to access health care or forgo seeking services altogether. Medicaid expansion — which Senator Collins opposed in the ACA — has played a critical role in Maine by shoring up the state’s struggling rural hospitals, which makes Maine’s hospitals much more likely to avoid closing their doors compared to other states that haven’t expanded Medicaid.
Sara has pushed to bring much-needed resources to Maine’s rural hospitals, including her recent petitioning of the federal government to expand its Paycheck Protection Program to include hospitals that are in bankruptcy proceedings — a reality two Maine hospitals are facing. As the pandemic continues to impact communities, Sara believes in bolstering the health care system in rural areas with increased funding for community health centers, expanded access to mobile testing centers, and investment in digital broadband and programs that connect rural residents to telemedicine options. She will also support efforts to recruit doctors and nurses to rural communities, support making the more flexible Medicare telemedicine policies that were put in place during the coronavirus permanent, and support giving rural hospitals the resources they need to make new investments in their facilities and staff. She has also called for reducing the limit on “critical access hospitals” in rural areas.
Protecting reproductive rights and expanding access to reproductive health care is essential.
The Trump administration has taken several steps to attack reproductive rights, including prohibiting federally-funded providers from offering information or referrals to abortion services, as well as expanding employers’ ability to deny access to contraceptive care based on religious or moral grounds. Maine’s network of reproductive care health centers has given up $2 million in federal funding as a result, posing a threat to their ability to provide comprehensive health care to Maine people. Senator Collins has proven to be in line with the administration’s thinking, voting to defund Planned Parenthood and allowing employers to deny vital health care services, such as contraception and preventative care. Senator Collins has also supported the installment of dozens of Trump-backed anti-choice judges into lifetime positions, further threatening reproductive rights.
Sara will protect and expand reproductive rights in the Senate, just like she has here in Maine. She championed legislation to ensure that all Mainers have access to reproductive care, with new laws that allow advanced-practice medical professionals to provide abortion care, and which also require public and private health insurance plans to cover abortion. Sara will continue the fight to protect funding for Planned Parenthood, to roll back the Title X gag rule, and to block the Senate’s confirmation of federal judges that put women’s health at risk.
She is proud to be endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL.
The opioid addiction epidemic continues to be one of the most critical issues in Maine. In the first three months of 2020, 127 people lost their lives in Maine due to drug overdoses, with projections for the year reaching 470 deaths — surpassing the state’s highest annual death toll to date. Prolonged isolation and ongoing financial struggles, intensified by the COVID-19 crisis, have placed increased burdens on victims of drug abuse.
Senator Collins has spent her tenure in the Senate taking in more than $110,000 from the country’s top six opioid distributors and refusing to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their role in the opioid pandemic. Senator Collins cast the deciding vote against applying civil penalties to insurance companies and employers who failed to cover addiction treatment at parity with physical benefits coverage.
As Speaker of the state House, Sara worked to address the crisis head-on by passing legislation to expand addiction treatment and prevention programs. She supported the state’s lawsuit against the drug company responsible for initiating and profiting from the crisis and advocated for “Good Samaritan” legislation to protect anyone who reported a drug-related emergency from prosecution. Her relentless work to expand Medicaid provided at least 7,000 Mainers suffering from opioid addiction access to critical treatment and recovery services.
Sara also worked to pass legislation to expand access to a life-saving overdose-reversal drug. Despite former Governor Paul LePage’s veto of the measure, she led the fight to override his veto and garnered overwhelming bipartisan support.
As Senator, Sara will continue leading this fight in Washington, where she will work to implement a comprehensive plan that includes expanding access to affordable addiction treatment, creating bridge and diversion programs to ensure that people have access to treatment at the moment they’re ready, and funding education and prevention efforts, as well as public health research, while holding big pharmaceutical companies accountable for their role in the crisis.
