Rep. Michele Meyer is a registered nurse and represents Eliot, Kittery and South Berwick. Sen. Henry Ingwersen represents Arundel, Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis and Lyman. Meyer and Ingwersen are the chairs of the Joint Standing Committee on Health and Human Services. 

Our health care system is in crisis. Prices are growing faster than families and businesses can afford, and Maine’s people are looking to the Legislature to take action to make things better.

As it stands, families are being forced to make difficult — even impossible — decisions about whether to buy food and fuel or health insurance so that they can see a doctor if they become sick or injured. Small businesses are losing the ability to offer quality, affordable health care to their employees.

As chairs of the Health and Human Services Committee of the Maine Legislature, we can say that our committee has worked diligently to reduce the number of people in our state who are uninsured. And now, the costs of care — and factors outside of our control, particularly at the federal level — are moving us backward.

That’s unacceptable.

The Health and Human Services Committee in March approved an amended version of LD 2196, An Act to Lower Health Insurance Costs, Reduce Barriers to Health Care and Ensure Fair Prices for Health Care, that takes a small, reasonable step forward in controlling the cost of health care.

While the bill is scaled back from the more extensive original proposal, it represents real progress and a win for consumers.

The bill puts price growth caps on hospital services for individual health insurance, small group plans and the state employee health plan. No hospital will receive less money than they do today, but they won’t be able to grow those prices as fast in the future.

According to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, LD 2196 will save consumers more than $200 million over five years.

The bill also invests in primary care, which is the foundation of good health and a good health care system, and in behavioral health by setting a payment floor for these services that eventually grows to 150% of Medicare in 2034.

Hospital bills make up the largest share of health care spending in Maine and around the country, and the prices hospitals are charging have been increasing much faster than inflation for many, many years.

The problem of health care costs is not solely the responsibility of hospitals, but they do play a big part in it. And hospitals have to be part of the solution.

Health insurance rates for 2026 increased 24% in the small market and 18% in the individual market. Wages and business earnings can’t keep up.

In 2024, the average premium for a family plan in Maine totaled over $25,000 — nearly a third of our median household income, and health care spending now comprises approximately 10% of household budgets. 

According to a recent survey from Consumers for Affordable Healthcare, nearly 40% of Mainers are now skipping or delaying going to the doctor when they are sick due to cost. 

The original LD 2196 did much more and included price caps on hospital services tagged to Medicare. That proposal would have had a much larger savings for consumers, but it also had a much larger impact on hospitals. As a committee, it was necessary that we find a way to balance those competing issues.

By slowing how fast hospitals can raise prices, this proposal will help to control the cost of health insurance. It will save families and small businesses money, and it will give us important information about how we can develop sound policy to do even more.

We are proud of the work that the committee — and hundreds of stakeholders — did on this bill, and know that if passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, this legislation will make a real and substantial difference for Maine families.

We simply can’t allow the status quo to persist. We have left too many people with impossible choices that affect their ability to live happy, productive and secure lives. LD 2196 moves us in the right direction. It’s the right step at the right time.