LaMarche Builds Campaign on Universal Healthcare
By Victoria Wallack
Pat LaMarche, the Green Independent Party candidate for governor, believes the key to fixing what ails the state — from high taxes to the loss of good-paying jobs — is universal health care paid for with a 5 percent to 12 percent tax on payroll, including the government's.
"There are gigantic companies that rely on public assistance" to cover the insurance of their employees, she said, referring to Wal-Mart and other stores like it. Under her plan, they would all be forced to pay into the universal health care pot, under a payroll tax ranging from 5 percent to 12 percent based on their number of employees. |
The former radio personality, who is making her second bid for governor after running a national campaign as the Green Party vice presidential candidate in 2004, says she focuses on health care because the current system is so expensive and inefficient.
"If we correct the health care system, we'd have a major engine for business," she said, arguing that it would save taxpayer dollars on health insurance for teachers and government workers and cut down on the cost of caring for the uninsured, who use the emergency room as their clinic.
LaMarche also would like to see the state reduce the burden on taxpayers for the cost of education by charging big companies — namely Nestle — for extracting water for its Poland Spring operation. And she wants to restructure the property tax to make it a property transfer tax, tapping into real profit when real estate is sold.
"We look to the same poor, broken taxpayers for every dime," she said of the current system.
The author of a newly released book, "Left Out in America," which recounts the 14 nights she spent in 14 different homeless shelters while traveling across the country in 2004 to put a spotlight on the problem of homelessness, LaMarche believes her biggest obstacle to victory in November is that people think she can't win.
"People have to believe that I can win," she said. "The glass ceiling is my greatest barrier."
On the issues
When LaMarche talks about the biggest issues facing the state, she invariably returns to health care. It not only drives up the cost of doing business, it also drives up the cost of government, for state-sponsored health insurance for teachers and state workers and for poor people on Medicaid.
Her idea is to create a universal health care system that she says would save money. Employers would no longer have to foot premium costs for their employees and those businesses that don't offer health insurance would be required to kick in to stop the cost-shifting to those that do.
"There are gigantic companies that rely on public assistance" to cover the insurance of their employees, she said, referring to Wal-Mart and other stores like it. Under her plan, they would all be forced to pay into the universal health care pot, under a payroll tax ranging from 5 percent to 12 percent based on their number of employees.
The federal government would be billed for the coverage offered its employees; state and local government also would kick in to help pay for their share of the plan; and, Maine would petition the federal government to allow Medicaid participants to be included in the coverage, bringing with them
federal matching dollars.
The plan would not have any deductibles or co-payments, and provide "just essential coverage. No Botox and no Viagra," she said.
LaMarche calls the state's current program for insuring the uninsured — DirigoChoice — a very expensive "boo-boo," which is failing because it is being run by a private insurance company, Anthem.
On education, she says Maine schools are doing a "very good job," but we need to find a better way to pay for them.
She would put a 3 percent charge on Nestle or any other company extracting large quantities of water from Maine and use the money to help defray costs in K-12 education, higher education and road projects.
She also would like to see the state take over labor negotiations for all the state's teachers, creating a single bargaining unit, and use state funds to pay the salary bill.
On taxes, she would like to see the system overhauled,
including getting rid of the traditional property tax and instead collecting a transfer tax on the profit or capital gain made when a person sells his or her home.
She, like all of the other gubernatorial candidates except Republican Sen. Chandler Woodcock, is against the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which will appear as Question 1 on the November ballot.
"I want new leadership. I don't want a new plan," she said. "TABOR is just going to take the same people who were incompetent and put a choke hold on them."
