Diagnosis | A speaker at a health care conference sponsored by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield says health care costs could marginalize Maine
Reducing Maine’s high cost of health care was the topic of a conference for Maine’s health care leaders held Oct. 1 at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. The conference, “Health care costs: Maine’s burning platform — Can we extinguish the fire?” was organized by insurer Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a subsidiary of Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., and the Maine Health Management Coalition, a Scarborough-based collection of employers, doctors, health insurers and hospitals. A recent study of health care costs in a number of East Coast states from Maine to Georgia found that Maine’s inpatient expenses were 19% higher than the average, and its outpatient costs were a whopping 67% higher than the average, according to Dan Corcoran, president of Anthem in Maine.
The conference featured a trio of state and national health care policy experts, including Erik Steele, chief medical officer at Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, based in Brewer. Steele painted a grim future for Maine’s economy if the price of health care continues to outpace real wage increases for Mainers. Inflating health care costs will continue, he says, to “marginalize” the Maine economy, making it difficult to attract new businesses to the state and to keep businesses already here from relocating or outsourcing their employees. “If we don’t change things,” Steele said, “I predict Maine will become the country’s third world economy in 10 years.”
In order to keep jobs in Maine, Steele suggested health care providers and insurers focus on long-term strategies for lowering costs as well as ways to trim costs over the next five years. To do this, Steele recommended adopting a statewide approach that would reduce money spent on unnecessary procedures and that would instead use those funds to strengthen programs proven scientifically to be the most effective at treating diseases and boosting overall health.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments