HOULTON, Maine — U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) was in Aroostook County Friday and Saturday, making stops at local businesses and health centers as a way to keep in touch with the needs of those in northern Maine.
“Part of my job is to just go out and listen to people,” he said.
At Katahdin Valley Health Center, King emphasized the importance of ensuring all Mainers, including those who live in the more rural part of the state like Aroostook County, have access to high-quality health services.
“The location of your home shouldn’t dictate the quality of your health care,” King said. “But far too often, people who live in rural Maine struggle to find convenient, high-quality health care services because of where they live. That’s why places like KVHC are so important. Through its five locations, KVHC is making affordable health care more accessible for thousands of people across northern Maine, and with its innovative advancements in telemedicine, it’s bringing its vital services into the comfort of patients’ homes. That is the future of health care in this country, and I applaud the staff at KVHC for their outstanding work and will continue to advocate for federal support so that people across Maine, regardless of where they live, can have access to health care.”
King, led by CEO Durward Humphrey, toured KVHC where he met with staff and learned about their services. King has been a strong advocate for expanding broadband access in rural Maine in part to help advance telemedicine, which can make a significant difference in overcoming challenges presented by distance.
During the tour, King also emphasized the need for continued federal support of health centers across the state. KVHC, along with its five associated locations in Aroostook and Penobscot counties, serves approximately 10,000 people and is designated as a federally-qualified health center, which means that it receives federal funding to support its operations. KVHC recently received more than $2.5 million in grants, which play a vital role in ensuring that people throughout the region receive quality care.
King recently voted in favor of legislation that extends funding for health centers like KVHC. The bill, which Congress passed and the President signed into law, repeals the flawed sustainable growth rate formula used to pay doctors for Medicare services and renews for two years the health center funding that supports KVHC’s operations. Without the fix, KVHC was slated to lose the funding, which accounts for between 60 to 70 percent of its operational budget, jeopardizing the health center and the services it provides to patients.
King’s impressions of the Houlton health care center were positive.
“This is a first-class facility,” he said. “They had 45,000 visits in a year and that is a lot of health care delivery in this area. There are some really dedicated people here and hopefully we can help them out (in Washington) with some of their issues.”
One of issues, as stated by Humphrey during the meeting, was a lack of proper reimbursement for telemedicine conferences when patients in the Houlton facility might meet with a physician or other provider via a television video system.
Earlier in the day, King also toured Spring Break Maple and Honey in Smyrna, which is Maine’s largest producer of maple candy. He also visited F.A. Peabody in Houlton, a family owned insurance company that serves between 300 and 400 clients in the Affordable Care Act Marketplace in Aroostook, Washington and Penobscot counties.
King said he was very impressed with Spring Break Maple and Honey, a company that has thrived despite a lackluster production of maple tree sap throughout the state in recent years.
On Saturday, he also attended a health cancer conference in Presque Isle.
At F.A. Peabody, King heard a presentation from people who had both positive and negative experiences with the Affordable Health Care Act.
