Letters to the Editor

Expanding affordable coverage critical
for Maine women

To the Editor:
    In the next few weeks, Maine lawmakers will decide whether the state should accept federal funds under the Affordable Care Act to offer health insurance to uninsured Mainers, including thousands of women. If the measure to expand affordable health insurance in Maine fails during this legislative session, the consequences for many of our state’s female residents will be devastating.

    According to a 2012 report from the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), 12 percent of adult women receive health care coverage through Medicaid. Nearly 70 percent of adults on Medicaid are women. Nationally, approximately 20 percent of women are uninsured. Just over half of uninsured women (53 percent) had incomes less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level and would qualify for Medicaid if all states participated in the expansion.
    For many adult women, Medicaid provides an important protection against economic insecurity, but there are also several reasons why women are inherently at greater risk of an insecure retirement. Historically, women have been more likely than men to qualify for Medicaid because, on average, women have lower incomes and they are also more likely to fall into one of the program’s eligibility categories: pregnancy, parent of a dependent child, over 65, or having a disability.
    For one thing, women are more likely to take time out of the workforce to care for children and ailing parents. According to a recent report issued by the AARP Public Policy Institute, the majority (67 percent) of caregivers in America are women. As a result, it is estimated that women have 12 fewer years in the paid workforce over their lifetimes. The time out of the workforce not only lowers women’s lifetime earnings and savings, but also lowers their ultimate Social Security and pension benefits. Nationally, it costs the average woman more than $324,000 in lifetime wages and benefits to care for an aging parent. The subsequent retirement savings loss substantially increases women’s risk of long-term economic insecurity.
    Another challenge is that women typically are paid less than their male counterparts. A 2014 report published by The Pew Charitable Trust shows that men are paid more than women in every state, whether by percentage or weekly wages. According to the report, for every dollar earned by a male worker in Maine, a woman makes 79.5 cents. Employed women are also more likely to work part-time than employed men and less likely to participate in a pension plan. Women also tend to live longer than men and are more likely to live in poverty as they get older.
    The NWLC report goes on to point out that low-income women are far more likely to suffer from ill-health and often experience trouble accessing care. While adults over 50 of either sex will have, on average, at least one chronic condition, according to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, low-income women especially have much higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.
    Leaving women uninsured without access to primary and preventive care jeopardizes their chances for health and financial security in later life. Considering that women are far more likely to be poorer than men as they age in part due to the employment disadvantages mentioned above, gaining access to affordable health care coverage has never been more important.
    Accepting the federal dollars already set aside for Maine under Medicaid expansion will provide an opportunity for low-income women in our state to proactively manage their health conditions.
    They will have access to important preventive care such as mammograms, and regular checkups. By taking better care of themselves, they will be able to take better care of their children, ultimately benefitting the whole family.
    We hope Mainers, especially women, will voice their opinion on this important issue by urging their legislators to expand affordable health coverage through Medicaid.
    Providing health care coverage to more Maine women makes sense both for the health of Maine residents and for the state’s economy: It is a common sense decision and the right thing to do for women and for our families.

Carol Kontos,
former state president
AARP Maine

Remembering
Pete Seeger

To the Editor:
    On one of Pete Seeger’s birthdays a mutual friend asked me if I would bring my VW electric conversion car to the party, which was also a dedication of his new bio toilet, a clivus multrum. I had only one seat for the “pan” part of the stripped car but we found him a milk crate, after he had responded to the idea of taking a run up the road.
    We ran about half a mile and back and as we pulled off the road back at his rockbound Hudson River house, two state cops, pulled up behind us.
    “Have you been driving that rig on the road” one asked. It had no license plate. Since they had watched us I thought it best to admit. I got a tongue lashing from the uniforms. I suspect their primary duty was this assignment, keeping an eye on the “commie hillbilly singer,” this being 1974. J Edgar Hoover was in charge in Washington.
    “Well, don’t ever do it again!” and away they went, satisfied they had told us “what’s what.” I think they were very kind, to Pete. I forget the original length of the official chewing out.
    After they were gone we walked up toward the house, and I asked Pete how we should behave under those circumstances.
    “Go quietly and hire the best lawyer you can find,” he said.
    Several years later I got one of those recording phone messages from him.
    I had written to him after I read in the New York Times an item of a man standing all alone in the rain beside a more traveled road, holding up a small cardboard sign with “Peace” written on it. He called just to say he couldn’t remember the ride.
    Damn the answering machine. I would have liked hearing his real voice again.
    I can remember, always will, I hope. He was a true hero, fighting evil spirits with only a guitar for protection.
    Electric cars have come a long way. I drove one last September that seemed as though it could go 100 miles for just 76 cents in “fuel” — and no global warming at all.

Charles MacArthur
Sangerville

Bark may be sending the wrong message

To the Editor;
    Dover-Foxcroft K-9 police officer David Henderson is to be commended for his courteous response to my question of concern about what appeared to be his dog’s non-stop barking.
    The incident occurred about 5 p.m. Thursday at the Union Square traffic light. I was walking east on the sidewalk. The officer in a police car with tinted rear windows stopped for a red light, heading in the opposite direction. Five or six feet separated us.
    I imagine most of us are familiar with dogs barking and distinguish a friendly, welcoming bark from the menacing snarl of the proverbial “mean as a junk yard dog.”
    Surprised to hear what I felt was the latter, coming from a dog I could not see, I paused momentarily to look at the patrol car and the officer before the light changed; the car drove off and I walked on. A few moments later the same patrol car stopped to let me cross the alley between Pat’s Pizza and the Past Times Pub. Being on the officer’s side of the car I asked through the window, what caused his dog’s behavior.
    Officer Henderson kindly stepped outside the patrol car as the dog’s barking made conversation impossible; explaining his dog was specially bred to smell out drugs, protect him and would not hurt anyone unintentionally as the animal was trained to act only at his handler’s sign. Barking, Dave explained, was the dog’s natural response to protecting what it had been trained to understand was its space – the patrol car.
    Had this been a singular incident, it would be unremarkable. Yet, in the few moments Officer Henderson was talking to me, a woman walking past on the patrol car’s opposite side caused the animal to respond with a similar warning bark.
    Without going into justification for K-9 dogs in Dover, having a police K-9 barking this warning way at pedestrians seems counterintuitive when the town is doing its best to attract more tourists, businesses and customers – people of all types and description we hope will enjoy strolling sidewalks between stores, offices, cafes, theater, pizza parlors and pubs.

Bruce McAfee-Towl
Dover-Foxcroft

Gut punch

To the Editor:
    Everyone has been there. We all should empathize. It’s that feeling when you’ve been betrayed, you are cornered with no recourse and there is no possible way to win. At one time or another, we have all felt that way.
    That’s why I am uncomfortable with the name-calling that has issued from the conservative side of the political divide as all the dire predictions concerning this President have come to fruition. Frustration at those who voted for this experiment in socialized medicine has boiled over and, as the price tag hits the American main street, it’s easy to shout, “You voted for it, now how do you like it?!” or “You get what you deserve!” I have been as guilty as others of making snide, perhaps tasteless, but certainly sarcastic remarks at peoples’ unfortunate circumstances. Now, I have come to understand and be reminded — these are my fellow Americans. No matter who or what they voted for, they now face a future of despair. Hope and Change has decimated their own hope of a better future for themselves and those they love.
    I recently saw a news report that documented the reaction of workers in an urban auto body shop. The expression of despair on these blue collar workers’ as they looked at their new premiums under Obamacare was heart wrenching to watch.
    There was no space to gloat. No desire to say, “I told you so.” Just the wish that I, a fellow American, could have some power to make everything right again and takes us back to when things seemed more sane.
    Who knows what these workers’ political ideology is? I don’t! And I don’t care. I have felt that same sick feeling of despair in the pit of my stomach. That same feeling when it seems the perfect storm of calamity is upon you and it can’t possibly get worse. Then, it does.
    It feels like a gut punch, the feeling that the control of your future has been taken out of your hands. It’s like watching every dream evaporate and you are bound and helpless to prevent it. That’s what I saw in those, my fellow Americans, eyes.
    Much has been said about the great divide within our nation. Perhaps the disaster that has been this Presidency can have one positive effect. Maybe, it can unify us.
    Let us remember that one size does not fit all Americans because we are so diverse. Let us return to the standards that celebrated individuals and that our differences are what make up all the great pieces to this great engine of the United States.
    But most of all, let’s show compassion to our fellow Americans who have been betrayed by this President.
    Deepening the divide will not help us. It will destroy us. This President has proven what a majority of us knew all along; the government cannot help us. So, let’s do what Americans have always done.
    We can stand together again. Together we can rise from the ashes of this disaster the same way we have risen from every other disaster.
    But we must choose to stand.

Andy Torbett
Atkinson