Find out how much you will save under the LaMarche Healthcare Plan when every one of your employees has access to healthcare (and everyone else in the state does, too).

Just enter the following information about your company to see how the LaMarche Healthcare Plan can help your business. And don't forget that with Pat's Plan, there will be no more premiums, deductibles or co-pays.

The LaMarche Healthcare Plan will provide lifetime healthcare for each and every Mainer. The Plan provides healthcare — not simply insurance. For more information, see Pat's Healthcare Plan.

Most people don't realize how much Mainers pay for healthcare and in how many different ways we pay.

For starters, Mainers pay more for healthcare than most other people in the country. According to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, Maine's healthcare costs — as a percentage of gross state product — are a third higher than the national average.

Although we know that healthcare and health insurance are expensive, we don't realize how expensive healthcare really is because the costs are buried.

In addition to insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays, Mainers pay for healthcare through our taxes. Even if we don't have health insurance ourselves, we're still paying for someone else's healthcare through our taxes!

Here are some of the many ways we pay for healthcare:

• Insurance Premiums
  Those of us fortunate enough to have healthcare pay insurance premiums, or our employers do, or both of us wind up paying.
• Out-of-Pocket Expenses
  There is no insurance plan in Maine that does not have deductibles and co-pays. Mainers pay close to a billion dollars in out-of-pocket expenses annually.
• Federal Income Taxes
  Federal income taxes pay for Medicare and Medicaid, healthcare for low-income and senior citizens. Additionally, federal taxes pay for the insurance premiums of federal employees, elected officials, and military employees, as well as the healthcare benefits of veterans.
• State Income Taxes
  A portion of our state income taxes also goes to pay for Medicare and Medicaid. In Maine, many Medicaid and Medicare recipients are working folks who aren't offered health insurance at work and can't afford it on their own. This means that our income tax dollars not only fund the healthcare of the elderly and poor, but also subsidize profitable businesses. For example, more than ten percent of Wal-Mart employees in Maine receive this taxpayer-subsidized benefit, according to an AFL-CIO March 2006 report.
• Sales Taxes
  48% of our tax revenue came from sales taxes in 2004. State employees, including legislators and the governor, have their insurance premiums paid for by the taxpayers. When you buy a lawn mower, a car, or clothing, you are paying for state employees' health insurance premiums as well as for the state portion of Medicare and Medicaid.
• Death, Gift, Documentary and Stock Transfer Taxes
  All of these revenue streams go toward paying the same healthcare costs that our sales tax dollars pay.
• Cigarette Taxes
  According to the Government Performance Project, which ranks states on their fiscal viability, "Maine's tobacco funds are earmarked — used mostly for healthcare."
• Excise taxes
  Town and county employees' health insurance premiums are funded through the collection of excise taxes.
• Property taxes
  Like excise taxes, money generated through property taxes pays for the insurance plans of everyone from sheriff's deputies to town clerks.
• Hunting and Fishing licenses
  In 2004, fees were increased on these items and directed into the general fund. The general fund, in part, finances healthcare. It pays health insurance premiums for state employees, as well as funding the state's portion of Medicare and Medicaid.
• Workers Compensation Premiums
  Workplace-related illnesses and injuries are compensated through workers compensation. According to Insurance Strategies, Ltd., an insurance industry think tank, approximately 50% of workers compensation pays for healthcare.

As you can see, many Mainers pay for health care in many ways — over and over and over again.

Pat LaMarche's health care plan will do what the current system fails to do — provide quality health care for each and every Mainer. What's more, Pat's plan will deliver health care more effectively, more efficiently and for less money.

To play the spot, click in the toolbar above. See the script, Pat's speech, the press release, John Buells' article praising the LaMarche Healthcare Plan, and event photos.

More information

• Read the Plan
• Lowering taxes through common sense healthcare
• Event Photos
• Release: The LaMarche Plan Unveiled
• Release: Dirigo
• Release: LaMarche calls for medical, dental, pharmacy schools
• Release: LaMarche intervention helps "postpone" Baldacci plan to privatize mental health care
• Release: Pat applauds nurses on International Nurses Day
• News: LaMarche Medical School Plan well-received
• Opinion: Physician Calls for Single-payer Healthcare
• Pat's speech calling for medical, dental and pharmacy schools
• Pat's State of the State speech
• Pat's speech opposing privatization of mental health care