2022 Maine State Legislative Session Summary

Victory in the fight against cancer requires bold new public policies that promote cancer prevention, early detection of cancer, and expand access to quality, affordable health care. Lawmakers make many decisions that impact the lives of Mainers touched by cancer and their leadership is vital to defeating this disease. While the 2022 legislative session continued to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with most committee meetings being held virtually and a limited number of legislative session days, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) team continued working tirelessly with the Maine Legislature to make advancements in the following policy priorities:

Ensuring Access to Quality Care

• COVID-19 Protections: ACS CAN worked with the legislature and other public health and health care organizations to successfully defeat a bill that would have prohibited employers and other entities from requiring COVID-19 vaccination in order to protect public health. Vaccine requirements help protect immunocompromised patients, including many cancer patients and survivors. ACS CAN opposes efforts to undermine proven public health strategies, including vaccine requirements and the right of employers to enact similar protective policies.
• Protections Against Inadequate Coverage: ACS CAN worked with partners to successfully defeat a legislative proposal that would have allowed for the sale of health insurance plans that do not include comprehensive benefits coverage and are not subject to important patient protections required under the Affordable Care Act. Evidence shows that patients may be attracted to such coverage because of lower premiums but find themselves without coverage for needed services after a cancer diagnosis and footing the bill for costly services.
• Coverage of Fertility Services: ACS CAN worked with partners to successfully pass a bill requiring private health insurance coverage for fertility services. Coverage of fertility services provides options to be able to have children after cancer treatment has resulted in temporary or permanent infertility, an issue important to many young cancer patients. Coverage under the new law goes into effect for policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2024.
• Affordability of Health Coverage: ACS CAN advocated in support of two bills, which became law, that relate to affordability of health coverage. One bill directs The Office of Affordable Health Care, an independent executive agency, to analyze barriers to affordable health care and coverage and develop proposals on potential methods to improve health care affordability and coverage for individuals and small businesses in Maine. The other bill requires private health insurers to include all payments made by patients—directly or on their behalf – for prescription drugs to be counted toward their overall out-of-pocket maximum payment or deductible. This law will help reduce barriers to programs, like copay assistance, that help patients afford their prescription drugs.

Reducing the Toll of Tobacco

• Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Funding: ACS CAN led efforts to successfully pass a law that increases funding for statewide tobacco prevention and treatment efforts by $7.5 million per year, beginning in state fiscal year 2023. When this increased funding level goes into effect, Maine will be the only state in the nation that funds its state tobacco prevention and treatment program at the amount recommended by the US CDC.
• Protecting Maine’s Tobacco Control Laws: ACS CAN worked with partners to successfully defeat numerous attempts to roll-back Maine’s tobacco control laws, including efforts to allow the sales of certain tobacco products to youth under age 21 through the medical marijuana program and to allow marijuana retailers to sell some tobacco products at temporary, offsite locations like fairs and parks.
• Preventing and Reducing Youth Tobacco Use: ACS CAN advocated in support of proposals to end the sale of all flavored tobacco products. While ACS CAN and our partners were not successful in efforts to pass a state law to end the sale of all flavored tobacco products, we were successful in passing three municipal level ordinances in three of the state’s most populated municipalities: Bangor, Portland, and Brunswick. Bangor recently repealed its ordinance for procedural reasons, and we will be working with partners to reinstate the ordinance. Portland and Brunswick’s ordinances went into effect on June 1, 2022.

Health Equity

• Racial Impacts of Policy Proposals: ACS CAN testified in support of a bill that became law, which improves state data collection systems to collect better data with regard to racial and ethnic disparities and improve the ways in which the state collects, shares and uses data to inform the development of public policies to reduce health disparities.

For more information, contact: Hilary Schneider, Maine Government Relations Director, ACS CAN [email protected] • (207) 888-9826