AUGUSTA (AP) – The Dirigo Health bill, which envisions a program to make health insurance available to 180,000 Mainers who can’t afford it, failed late Thursday to draw enough votes to win final enactment in the House of Representatives.

The House may get another chance to vote on the bill after it goes to the Senate, where 24 votes are needed for final passage.

Thursday night’s House tally was 95-46, six votes short of the number needed if the bill is to take effect immediately. The vote followed a three-hour debate and after representatives mowed down a succession of amendments.

Among the half dozen changes that were rejected was one to reduce the proposal to a test program in a single county before it can expand statewide. Another amendment would have created a high risk pool instead of the elaborate public-private program envisioned in the bill.

Dirigo opponents portrayed the program as untried and doomed to failure.

“This bill is illusion and promise not fulfilled,” Assistant Minority Leader David Bowles, R-Sanford, said before the vote. “This bill is not the right thing.”

But Majority Leader John Richardson and other supporters said elected officials can no longer wait before doing something to provide affordable health insurance.

“I’m asking you tonight, take the first step,” said Richardson, D-Brunswick.

A companion measure that seeks to protect the Fund for a Healthy Maine from raids for non-health programs succeeded in an early vote, but failed to win the two-thirds majority it needed for final House passage and awaited further action.

The fund includes millions of dollars Maine has received as part of a settlement of states’ lawsuits against tobacco companies. A proposed constitutional amendment would ensure that the money is used only for health promotion and disease prevention.

Supporters say the tobacco settlement money was intended to be used for health purposes only.

“This is not the taxpayers’ dollars,” House Speaker Patrick Colwell, D-Gardiner, said after leaving the rostrum to defend the bill.

Others said they were leery of any law that restricts their ability to allocate state funds.

“This constitutional amendment binds our hands to new programs and new spending,” said Rep. Kevin Glynn, R-South Portland.

The House’s 90-55 vote fell seven votes short of the number needed to send the proposed amendment to voters.

The bill to create a universal health care system would create a quasi-public Dirigo Health, which would secure coverage through private insurers, while expanding eligibility under MaineCare.

The MaineCare income eligibility standards would expand to $11,225 for individuals and to $24,240 for parents with MaineCare eligible children.

Dirigo Health, which would take effect in July 2004, would also make health coverage available through participating employers, who would pay up to 60 percent of each employee’s premium costs.

The bill also includes provisions to hold down the rising costs of medical care, including a freeze on new facilities and voluntary caps for hospitals, doctors and insurers on operating margins.

It also includes quality-care safeguards.

Supporters call Dirigo Health the nation’s most far-reaching universal health care bill. The program would take effect in July 2004.

AP-ES-06-13-03 0010EDT

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