Direct-care workers need insurance; vote ‘no’ on 1

I have been following the recent debate surrounding Dirigo. I’m a direct-care worker and help keep elderly folk living in their homes. I don’t make tons of money and have no health insurance through my job. My husband and I buy our own catastrophic coverage so we won’t lose our house if one of us gets sick. It doesn’t cover much, but I’m healthy. However, I’ve lived with the threat of cancer my whole life. If I were to learn that I might have cancer, I will have to leave my job in search of one with health insurance. Right now, there is a shortage of direct-care workers in our state to care for our elderly and disabled because workers are leaving their jobs and new people are not coming in. If health insurance were in the picture, maybe direct-care workers could afford to stay at their jobs – and maybe younger people would think about direct care as an opportunity. For the past two years, the Direct Care Worker Coalition has been working with the legislature to amend Dirigo so that it would work better for direct-care workers. Our efforts failed due to the lack of funding for Dirigo. Repealing a potential funding source in the beverage tax for the state’s only health insurance plan is not the answer. I hope voters will vote NO on Question One in November and our elected officials take health insurance on as a top priority next year. We need it. Letter to the Editor, published Wednesday, October 29, 2008; Kennebec Journal submitted by Helen Hanson