Health care is about to topple in our cities. Management of Central Maine Healthcare’s hospitals will be taken over by a California company, Prime Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit owned by a for-profit company.

St. Mary’s has given up obstetric services and is closing its intensive care unit because of deficits. It is clear: Lewiston and Auburn are having a decrease in health care availability.

The reason is that both Medicare and Medicaid simply do not pay enough. Our hospitals are obliged to provide services at less than cost. Hospitals’ parent corporations have been covering these losses. This cannot continue much longer.

Our governor wants to expand state Medicaid. Providers of health care are underpaid so severely they cannot meet overhead due to government underpayment, excessive regulation and documentation requirements. Hospitals cut costs by reducing staff, resulting in overworked nurses who sometimes give up nursing. There are too few private payers to make cost shifting work.

The collapse of Lewiston-Auburn’s healthcare system could happen suddenly.

Our hospitals are valuable assets, established and supported by our community for generations. The poor are affected early and most severely. We cannot expect help from outside. These are our hospitals and this is our community.

I propose more community involvement in saving our local hospitals. Perhaps a task force of health care providers, administrators, businesses and citizens should be formed to vigorously protect and preserve our hospitals now before it is too late and Lewiston-Auburn becomes a health care desert.

Frederick Holler, M.D., Auburn

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