Meet the Uninsured ; Students, Carpenters, Sales Clerks - One in Eight Maine Adults Lacks Health Insurance. The State's New Dirigo Health Plan Aims to Curb the Problem, but Some Doubt It Will Be the Cure. Series: Special Report: Soaring Health Costs About Our Series the High Cost of Health Insurance has Priced Out More Than 130,000 Mainers. How Did We Get Here, and What Do We Do Next? Coming Monday: Dirigochoice, the State's New Health Insurance Program, Attempts to Cover Maine's Uninsured. But Will It Attract Its Target Market, Small Businesses with Fewer Than 50 Workers?

Summary

---

First in a two-part series.

Ever mindful of not having health insurance, Mike Martel tried to ignore flashing warning signs - sharp pangs that attacked his abdomen hours at a time, first weeks, then days apart.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Meet the Uninsured ; Students, Carpenters, Sales Clerks - One in Eight Maine Adults Lacks Health Insurance. The State's New Dirigo Health Plan Aims to Curb the Problem, but Some Doubt It Will Be the Cure. Series: Special Report: Soaring Health Costs About Our Series the High Cost of Health Insurance has Priced Out More Than 130,000 Mainers. How Did We Get Here, and What Do We Do Next? Coming Monday: Dirigochoice, the State's New Health Insurance Program, Attempts to Cover Maine's Uninsured. But Will It Attract Its Target Market, Small Businesses with Fewer Than 50 Workers?

A couple of years passed before Martel doubled over in pain this July while at his job selling tropical fish at a Saco pet store. Scared of the cost of calling an ambulance but in no condition to ride his bicycle three miles to the hospital, he asked his boss for a lift.

"It was an umbilical hernia," the 55-year-old Martel said, of a congenital defect that can worsen in adulthood. "They operated on me the same day."

Silently, imperceptibly, the high cost of health insurance in Maine has thrown up walls around low-income workers like Martel who earn too much to qualify for government assistance but too little to afford plans with proper coverage, or any at all.

Nearly 11 percent of Mainers go without insurance - lower than the national average but the highest rate in New England,...

See the full content of this document

---