The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced this afternoon that Maine is one of 13 states to win an $8.5 million grant to support the expansion of health care coverage for uninsured populations. 

John Hailey is the owner of a home health care agency in Maine and employs mostly part-time workers. "Our current health care system is so flawed that when a worker in our field, which a lot of them are part-timers, earns enough wages in a week to force them to lose Medicaid, they come to me -- and it's happened on many occasions -- and ask me to reduce their wages ro reduce their hours,"
Hailey said, addressing a panel of Mainers who each shared their individual horror stories about health insurance coverage with Kathleen Sebelius, the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Visiting the University of Maine at Orono to listen to those stories, Sebelius also announced that Maine has received a grant under the new State Health Access Program. The program is designed to allow states to develop new strategies for providing health insurance to their uninsured residents.  

"There were many states who applied, but only 13 states will receive grants," Sebelius said.  " About $70 million total is going to be allocated across the country and $8.5 million is coming here to Maine."

Sebelius says the goal is to expand coverage in three important groups:  "Who are direct care workers, for seasonal workers and for part-time workers.  So those dollars will be used to fill an important gap for people who are hard at work but don't right now have access to affordable health coverage."

The grants, to be made over a 5-year period, could bring Maine more than $42 million over that time. They would require a 20 percent match from the state, unless the state demonstrates a financial hardship. Trish Riley, Director of the Maine Governor's Office of Health Policy and Finance, says the state will be able to come up with the matching funds.

"We now have funding through the legislature for Dirigo and some of it can be inkind--the kind of staff time we put into it.  So that's all part of the budget and it's all secured and available," Riley says.

In addition, the state must show that it is able to sustain the program after federal funding has expired.  The impact and results of state projects will be reported to Congress at the end of the grant period.

"When you cover people, you can't tell them you're covering them for a year, and we hope we can get them coverage next year and next year," Riley says.  "So what the federal government in its wisdom has done is said, 'Let's make this a long-term committment.'  And it overlaps the discussion about national reform.  So one would hope it would simply transition into what national reform brings us."
 
The grant comes to Riley's office, and the majority will go to Dirigo for a new product aimed at helping part-time and seasonal workers. The funding has already raised the eyebrows of at least one conservative organization, the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

"Sending $8.5 million to Maine to fund Dirigo, they'll learn that a public option is an expensive hobby," says Martin Sheehan, a spokesman for the Center.  "It's a lot of money.  The whole amount is about $71 million and Maine is receiving about 12 percent of that. If you look at the number of uninsured in Maine, it's about 120,000, which is a quarter of a percent of the uninsured nationwide.  So it looks like rather than just trying to help the uninsured here, they're trying to have undue influence in Maine."

The state says the grant includes money for marketing, so the expanded Dirigo program should be well-advertised to those who are eligible.