PORTLAND – Holding signs and chanting “Health care for people, not for profits” and “Stop scaring your health care workers,” the Maine People’s Alliance rallied in front of Maine Medical Center Thursday morning.

The protest was aimed at the hospital’s opposition to state efforts to expand health-care coverage by, in part, trimming reimbursements to hospitals.

In the frigid air, MPA representatives distributed a report showing that Maine Medical Center and its parent company, Maine Health, pay executives annual compensation ranging from $131,866 to $597,558. That kind of pay raises questions about hospitals “crying poverty,” said MPA spokeswoman Amy Thompson.

The MPA called on hospitals to work with Gov. John Baldacci in implementing the Dirigo health plan, not fight it. Dirigo begins July 1 and is supposed to provide affordable health insurance for small businesses and individuals now priced out of the market.

Republicans, hospital officials and other providers have insisted that before the state begins Dirigo, which will also expand the state’s existing MaineCare health program for low-income individuals, the state must fully fund the program.

In a related matter, Baldacci is reducing reimbursement rates to hospitals for their MaineCare patients to fill a MaineCare budget deficit. In the last two weeks hospital officials and other providers have said the cuts could force them to lay off workers.

At the rally Thursday, Thompson called those claims “ridiculous” considering the resources hospitals and their parent companies have.

The MPA report sheds light “on the money-making endeavors of the so-called nonprofit, and casts some doubts on the hospitals’ recent cries of poverty and ‘just say no’ approach to the Dirigo solution,” Thompson said.

MPA protester Susan Pastore of Portland said nurses and doctors do fine work, “but it makes me angry that the hospitals dare to use this emotional blackmail and threaten jobs because of Dirigo.”

When Maine Medical Center pays its president $600,000 a year and is part owner of four for-profit entities, it raises questions, Pastore said. “We need to expand access. The hospitals must be part of the solution.”

Hospital representatives called the rally and report “misinformation.”

CEO salaries at Maine Medical Center are set by a board of trustees from the community. To determine salaries, the trustees use national data, explained spokesman Wayne Clark. Maine Medical is a $500 million-a-year operation with 5,000 employees. There are no other nonprofit organizations in Maine of that size.

The protesters don’t understand “that we’re all on the same side,” Clark said. “We’re trying to preserve our ability to take care of the very people they say they represent.”

Maine hospitals are part of the solution to the crisis, he said. The for-profit entities in Maine Medical’s parent corporation help pay for charity care for people without insurance, he said. “At this moment there are 71 patients at MMC covered by MaineCare and six patients who will receive free care.”

Mary Mayhew of the Maine Hospital Association called the rally “a disservice to the crisis we’re trying to address. We’re on the front line trying to provide care every single day, and we can’t afford to have the state walking away from its commitment to pay for the Medicaid (MaineCare) program.”

Thursday’s rally was the third by the Maine People’s Alliance. Similar protests were held last year at Lewiston’s Central Maine Medical Center and Bangor’s Eastern Maine Medical Center. Thompson said more would be held.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com