1. Fund for a Healthy Maine:
Creating opportunities for better health
and lower costs for everyone
Healthy families are the key to a healthy economy. When people are healthy,
children do better in school, workers are more productive, and businesses can
add jobs because their health costs are lower.
Maine’s economic recovery depends on bringing down the cost of health care
for businesses, and that’s what the Fund for a Healthy Maine is designed to do.
Maine business leaders consistently identify lowering health costs as the single
most important priority for lawmakers to address in their efforts to spur new
economic growth.1
The Fund for a Healthy Maine (FHM) is our golden opportunity to invest in
preventing disease rather than paying for it after the fact. It’s just common
sense that the best way to get health costs under control for families and
businesses is to keep people healthy in the first place.
We have an ethical and moral obligation to the Maine people who got sick and
died as a result of tobacco addiction. The FHM is not a rainy day fund. The FHM
is a special fund with a special purpose: prevent disease today so current and
future generations can be healthy and prosperous.
The Governor’s budget dismantles the Fund and the special legacy it provides to
the people of Maine.
Recognizing the tremendous opportunity Maine’s tobacco settlement presented,
the Legislature designed the Fund specifically to “supplement, not supplant”
General Fund expenditures. The Governor’s budget eliminates this protection
and uses the Fund to fill budget gaps, flying in the face of a decade of bipartisan
legislative support.
1
Maine State Chamber of Commerce/Maine Development Foundation (2010),
www.mainechamber.org/images/MakingMaineWork/MakingMaineWork_Report2010WEB.pdf

2. It would be foolish and short-sighted to give away $7.50 tomorrow for $2 today.
That’s not a good deal for Maine. Every dollar invested in preventing disease and
promoting opportunities for good health saves $7.50 in long-term health costs.2
That’s the price we’ll pay if we cut FHM prevention dollars to supplant General
Fund dollars that receive a federal match on Medicaid 2-to-1.
Maine people consistently and strongly oppose balancing the budget with
tobacco settlement dollars. Using the FHM as it was intended – to prevent
disease and promote good health – has been overwhelmingly supported in
statewide polls since the Fund was created.
The current proposal takes Maine in the wrong direction. Maine people need
good jobs and every opportunity to live healthy lives. Keeping the FHM working to
prevent disease and promote good health is our best opportunity to support
healthy families and lower costs for businesses.
The Fund for a Healthy Maine is working! Helping smokers quit, giving kids a
healthy start, providing opportunities for new parents, motivating families to get
active, teaching students about healthy choices, and engaging communities in
every corner of Maine: each one leads to a brighter future for all of us. Why
would we dismantle one of Maine’s biggest success stories?
The people of Maine are counting on Maine legislators
to protect the Fund for a Healthy Maine and keep it
working as it was intended – creating opportunities for
better health and lower costs for everyone.
Prepared by the Friends of the Fund for a Healthy Maine, February 2011
2
Trust for America’s Health (2009), www.healthyamericans.org/reports/prevention08/Prevention08.pdf