AUGUSTA (AP) – As anticipated one day earlier by Health and Human Services Commissioner Brenda Harvey in her opening presentation, a Baldacci administration plan to pay less to mental health service providers came under sharp attack Wednesday as legislative budget hearings continued and audience participation increased.

“What is being proposed is not rate standardization but simply a rate cut,” said Chris Copeland, president of the Maine Association of Mental Health Services. “Bringing down the maximum rate paid to providers without raising the minimum doesn’t standardize rates.”

Copeland, the executive director of Tri-County Mental Health Services in western Maine whose association claims more than 40 providers, was one of numerous witness speaking before an overflow crowd and the Legislature’s Appropriations and Health and Human Services committees.

Some in the audience wore black clothing to signal their unhappiness with proposed budget cuts.

Baldacci administration officials told the committees Tuesday that care management initiatives for mental health system clients could generate about $54 million in savings over two years, while standardizing Medicaid payment rates and lowering the highest provider-specific rates could net another $20 million.

The savings have been proposed within Baldacci’s $6.4 billion budget package for the two years beginning July 1.

Copeland testified Wednesday that his association favors contracting with an experienced company – an administrative services organization – for management and rate-setting.

However, he added, taking renewed aim at the administration budget plan, “attempting to reduce overall costs with managed care and (simultaneously) attempting the rate reductions proposed will push a beleaguered system closer to collapse.”

The president of the board at Community Counseling Center in Portland, Lisa Toner, told lawmakers they should consider “a more rational approach to savings than the harsh budget cuts recommended in this budget.”

Urging more thought, Toner added,

“Just saying that Maine’s providers are paid too much and funding should be cut ignores the complex and delicate reality of providing these safety net services to low-income, isolated and often very ill people.”

Not all the critics focused on reimbursement rate changes.

“As I understand the two policy changes anticipated in this budget – more utilization review, more prior authorizations, more gatekeepers in managing who is eligible for services under Medicaid and also reducing the Medicaid payments to providers at mental health centers, I sense this will only exacerbate an already inadequate system of health care delivery to those in such desperate need,” said an Episcopal Church priest active in the Maine chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Rev. James Gill of Winthrop.

The budget hearings have been the primary focus at the State House this week with the Senate and House of Representatives scheduled for no floor sessions and most other committees idle or operating with light agendas.

The Appropriations Committee’s concentration on human services programs in the Baldacci budget package, with the Health and Human Services Committee sitting in, runs through the week.

Other major elements of the package include a tobacco tax increase that would produce about $66 million a year and bring the tax per-pack of cigarettes in Maine to $3 – the nation’s highest among the states.

The governor also hopes to shrink 152 school district administrations around the state to 26 units known as regional centers. Administration officials have booked $36.5 million in savings from such a consolidation for fiscal 2009.

AP-ES-02-21-07 1333EST

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