PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Local health care experts spoke with a small crowd at Presque Isle’s Turner Memorial Library on Wednesday, discussing the challenges and opportunities for health care in Aroostook County.
As part of a statewide series of forums sponsored by AARP of Maine, the discussion centered on problems facing the region’s aging population and ways to address them.
Kate Ende, consumer assistance program manager with the Maine chapter of Consumers for Affordable Health Care, said one the biggest issues facing health care in the state is Medicaid eligibility expansion, which voters approved last year in a ballot referendum but has yet to be implemented by Gov. Paul LePage.
“It would have a large economic impact both in the health of citizens and the viability of hospitals and health centers,” Ende said.
About 80,000 Mainers, including 4,000 people in Aroostook County, are estimated to qualify for coverage through the expansion of Medicaid, also known as MaineCare. The expansion, a provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, would offer Medicaid insurance coverage to people who earn less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $16,753 for a single person or $34,638 for a family of four.
“We are encouraging people to apply and if they are denied to appeal that denial. That way they can protect their right to get retroactive coverage,” Ende said. “Folks who are eligible should have been able to start receiving coverage on July 2 of this year.”
Ende said that Medicaid expansion would provide insurance coverage to people and families who currently lack coverage, and allow them to access preventive care that could help address health problems and diseases like cancer earlier.
Karin Howe, a volunteer with the Maine chapter of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said the group is working on a number of initiatives to protect regulations governing health benefits as well as prevention efforts.
Nationally, the American Cancer Society is focused on protecting provisions in the Affordable Care Act that prevent insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or imposing lifetime limits on healthcare benefits, Howe said.
The group also is working to close a loophole in preventive colonoscopy coverage that can affect seniors on Medicare. Iif a Medicare patient gets a colonoscopy that finds polyps which are removed, patients can sometimes get a bill for 20 percent of that procedure, even though colonoscopies and other preventive services are legally supposed to be covered with no patient cost sharing.
“That’s a loophole we’re trying to change,” Howe said.
She added that the group also is working with other public health groups to address major causes of disease, such as tobacco use.
Howe said that 28 percent of high schoolers in Aroostook County have used a tobacco product in the last 30 days, and 25 percent of Aroostook County adults still smoke cigarettes.
Tanya Sleeper, a professor of nursing at the University of Maine Fort Kent, said she’s working on expanding the number of nurses who work in northern Maine.
“In Aroostook County, Maine and nationally, we have a nursing shortage and that is not going to go away,” Sleeper said.
UMFK has more than 600 nursing students, with half coming from outside Aroostook County, and the next generation of nurses are going to need to be a part of providing health care to people in new ways, outside of hospital settings.
“We have to think about what the caregiver needs will be. There’s more emphasis on outpatient care, getting people home sooner, and not having long hospital stays,” Sleeper said.
Joy Barresi Saucier, executive director of the Aroostook Area Agency on Aging, said that her agency is working on the forefront of helping seniors live better and longer with independence.
The agency provides long-term services and supports, which span “everything we can do to keep someone living in their home,” Saucier said.
“Our agency sits at the kitchen table, and helps you figure out how we’re going to keep you out of the hospital and living in your home.”
Saucier said that while there are major challenges in addressing these issues, she’s optimistic about the work ahead. The Aroostook Agency on Aging is one of a number of groups that have received funding from the Maine Community Foundation to try to reframe aging as a positive aspect of life.
“If we can together as a community understand that we are all aging, as we age we add value to our communities, we can take our communities to much higher levels,” Saucier said.
