This is in response to the Sun Journal editorial of Dec. 6, “An evaluation of public benefits, private insurance.”

I am a health policy consultant who worked on health policy in the United States Senate for nearly a decade. I commend the Sun Journal editorialist for tackling the subject of public benefits and private insurance — an important topic as Maine implements the broad expansion of public and private health insurance coverage required by the Affordable Care Act at a time when Gov. Paul LePage and DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew are struggling to contain health care costs.

Health care expenditures must be contained, but I disagree with the editorial’s assertion that eliminating non-emergency medical transportation for MaineCare (Maine’s name for the federal-state Medicaid program) recipients would lead to cost savings. Transportation is a primary component of an efficient and effective health care delivery system for the low- and moderate-income citizens of Maine.

The federal government, which pays a majority of the costs of the MaineCare program, requires states to provide medical transportation to early intervention and preventive medical care for beneficiaries who have no other means of accessing medical services.

Providing transportation encourages early treatment of disease and avoids subsequent escalating health care costs. The Medicaid transportation benefit is an effective means of keeping low-income, elderly and disabled recipients out of hospitals and nursing homes. Health care costs escalate rapidly when acutely ill individuals call ambulance services to bring them to equally high cost emergency rooms at 15 times the cost for routine transportation

MaineCare’s annual cost for medical transportation services in the state’s overall budget is less than 2 percent of total expenditures. This wise investment could yield even more savings if Maine followed the lead of most states and better managed MaineCare’s transportation benefit through a “non-emergency transportation broker” in order to increase access to transportation, reduce costs and minimize fraud.

The state should look at more effective ways to manage its Medicaid transportation program rather than eliminate the benefit and increase the costs of health care for its citizens in MaineCare.

Marsha Simon, Washington, D.C.

Editor’s note: Marsha Simon is president of Simon & Co., LLC, a firm that represents companies and nonprofits that work in the health care sector.