I work as an emergency physician in central Maine and I see the benefits of the Fund for a Healthy Maine every day. The programs supported through FHM are making people healthier and lowering costs for all of us.

I would like to see the day when all I take care of in the emergency department are the accidents in life — instead of spending so much time and effort treating all the preventable causes of illness.

If Mainers increasingly are obese, smoke, have poor oral health, have unintended pregnancies and deliver sick babies, our health care costs will continue to spiral out of control.

Emergency departments will be overflowing with Mainers needing preventable, high-cost care; care that would be unnecessary with maintaining modest public health investments today.

This past fall, legislators and public health experts worked side by side to analyze the most cost-effective way to spend the FHM dollars. In the final report, there was full support on both sides of the aisle to maintain the original intent of this funding to assure public health prevention efforts across the state.

Those unanimous, bipartisan recommendations that will affect the long-term health of citizens for a generation, need to be taken into account, and should not be ignored for the sake of an ill-advised, shortsighted budget fix today.

Joel A. Kase, DO, MPH, Lewiston