Maine has a special connection to the New Deal of 1933, whose originator, Frances Perkins, spent much of her life as a part-time resident of Newcastle. The Roosevelt initiatives that Ms. Perkins, the first woman to serve as a member of a presidential cabinet, helped craft were the beginning of the most important social compact ever developed between the federal government and its senior citizens.

The process that started in the depths of the Great Depression has provided five generations of Americans with a measure of health and financial security as we age, keeping many of us from destitution and even early death. The New Deal created Social Security, and was later followed by Medicare and Medicaid and, most recently, the Affordable Care Act.

If not for Medicare, I would almost certainly be bankrupt and, perhaps, even dead. I might not have had access to the health care services that saved my life after a heart attack and which have ensured a healthy lifestyle since then.

More than 288,000 Mainers are current Medicare beneficiaries — part of the 55-million Americans who participate in the single most efficient health care insurance system this country has ever devised. Yet those guaranteed benefits, provided by an insurance program into which all working Americans contribute with every paycheck, are at risk.

The American health care system is complicated, but the combination of Medicare, Medicaid and certain provisions of the ACA, such as annual wellness visits, the elimination of the lifetime cap on insurance coverage, the elimination of pre-existing conditions exclusions and the closing of the notorious “doughnut hole” for prescription drug coverage, are vital for the economic and health security of most Maine seniors. However, the entire system is currently being threatened.

No single program has done as much to help minimize cost increases and extend coverage to more seniors, both in Maine and nationwide, than Medicare. In addition, it is important to remember that Medicare is critical to Maine’s economy. Taken together, health care, long-term care and home-care services comprise one of the biggest private-sector industry in the Lewiston-Auburn area.

Despite President Donald Trump’s verbatim assurance during his campaign that he would “protect and save your Social Security and your Medicare,” some in Congress are pushing ahead with their long-simmering proposal to turn Medicare into a “premium support program.” That really means they intend to create a voucher system, a scheme that would be the end of guaranteed health insurance coverage for American seniors. Our guaranteed benefits would be replaced with a private system that simply will not cover the costs of health care.

Although Medicare’s systems could use a review to streamline procedures and curtail fraud, the (Old) New Deal offers the assurance of guaranteed care to seniors in Maine and throughout our country. The “new” deal endangers our health and our financial security.

That’s why AARP is launching a full-scale effort to protect the benefits we have all worked for. Our elected members of Congress must be made to understand that turning Medicare into a private voucher system will not be tolerated.

The 230,000 AARP members here in Maine are leading the effort to protect what is ours, and our voices must be heard. We are calling upon everyone who is concerned about their own health and financial security, and that of their families — both now and in future generations — to get involved.

It is worth noting that the first people to pay into Medicare had little expectation that they would ever draw benefits. They regarded the opportunity to participate in the program as an investment in their families’ future. We owe it to them, as well as to ourselves, our children and grandchildren, to keep the system intact.

There is a serious threat to the health and financial security of older Americans. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic — something of which there is too much, lately — I have to assert that this really is a matter of life and death. We must make sure that Medicare remains strong and that health care is affordable and accessible for all older Mainers.

Rich Livingston of Biddeford, formerly of Auburn, is the volunteer state president of AARP-Maine.

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