By Lisa Chmelecki,Staff Writer

JAY – Michael Palmer plans to pack his 1995 Eagle Summit on Sunday with two suitcases, a box of canned food, a couple of blankets, an extra pair of cowboy boots and his Bible.

He’ll clean up his tiny, rundown trailer in Jay and return the key to his landlord. Then, the 48-year-old former truck driver will make his way to the State House in Augusta.

He plans to park as close to Gov. John Baldacci’s office as possible until someone does something to help him.

Or he is hauled off to jail.

“I’d be better off in jail,” he said. “At least there, I’d get three meals a day, a roof over my head and my meds.”

Palmer’s protest comes three months after the state told him he makes too much money to qualify for full health-care coverage.

Not right’

A cancer survivor with diabetes and degenerative bone disease, Palmer hasn’t worked since 1997.

His only income is the $844 disability check that he gets from Social Security.

Here’s the problem: A disabled adult is eligible for full MaineCare benefits only if he or she makes less than $798 a month.

That means Palmer, whose prescription medications cost him about $580 a month, simply makes too much.

To Palmer, it makes no sense.

“I don’t feel this is right. I don’t think this is fair,” he said Thursday, as he was packing up his trailer and getting ready to move into his car. “If you’re disabled and they disqualify you, it’s not right.”

Palmer believes that anyone who relies on disability checks from the federal government should automatically qualify for free health care from the state.

But it’s not that simple, according to Michael Norton, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Human Services.

“The source of someone’s income doesn’t matter,” Norton said. “With a program like MaineCare, we have lines and we can’t necessarily bend them to individual factors.”

End of career

A tall, husky man with a shaved head and tattoos on both arms, Palmer broke down and cried while talking about his decision to give up his trailer and move into his car in order to afford his medication.

“I decided last month that I was going to have to make a decision,” he said. “I was going to have my meds or I was going to have a roof over my head.”

He chose his meds, predicting he would be dead in a month without them.

Palmer’s health problems began in 1994 when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. The cancer spread to his chest in 1997. Around the same time, he was diagnosed with diabetes.

That is when he ended his 23-year career as a truck driver and started collecting Social Security.

Since then, he’s been diagnosed with a painful degenerative joint disease, and doctors have found a benign tumor on his pituitary gland.

His illnesses require four medications, plus insulin, testing strips to monitor his glucose level and medical syringes.

Over the edge

For years, Palmer didn’t have to worry about paying for his prescriptions.

That changed in February when he moved from Poland to Jay. The state assigned him a new case worker, and after reviewing his status she determined he no longer qualified for full MaineCare coverage.

Small cost-of-living increases in his disability check had put him over the edge.

After plugging his information into a complicated formula, his case worker determined he was making $21 too much.

He lost full coverage and was put on another program that requires him to pay a $3,000 deductible every six months.

Norton, the DHS spokesman, acknowledged that Palmer’s new program isn’t ideal. But he emphasized that many people are much worse off. Norton also pointed out that the number of people receiving MaineCare benefits has increased by nearly 200,000 since 1991.

“Since you can’t help everybody, you help those with the least first,” he said.

That is no consolation for Palmer, who saves money by not buying gas for his stove. He uses his crock pot and George Foreman Grill to cook.

“I’m a Mainer. This is my state,” he said. “Don’t step on me like a bug, because I’m not one.”

An earnest man’

Palmer tried to get Social Security to decrease his monthly check, but he was told that his benefits are based on his previous income and could not be changed.

With no other options, he started visiting, calling and sending letters and e-mails to Baldacci.

He claims he got no response.

Lynn Kippax, a spokesman for the governor, remembers meeting Palmer on two occasions.

“He’s an earnest man, and I feel for him,” Kippax said. “But the governor, who is about as empathetic a man as one can find, can’t do anything to change existing state and federal laws.”

Palmer survived for three months by borrowing $1,200 from a friend to pay for his medication. But he knew in April that time was running out.

He gave his notice to his landlord, and he found people to buy his couch, bed, washer and dryer, computer, stereo and collection of American eagle statues.

“Sleeping in my car won’t be easy,” he said, sitting on a camping chair in the middle of his bare living room. “But I’m going to do it.”

According to both Kippax and Norton, state officials are currently reviewing Palmer’s case to see if there is anything more they can do.

Come Monday morning, Palmer will be standing by.