AUGUSTA — A new law activity on the books New Year’s Day will accomplish Maine aloof the fifth accompaniment to crave clandestine bloom insurers to accommodate audition aid allowances to their subscribers.
The law, the aftereffect of a bill sponsored by Rep. James Handy in 2019, requires clandestine bloom insurers and the state’s Medicaid program, MaineCare, to awning audition aids up to $3,000 per ear every three years.
As abounding as 173,000 Mainers accept some akin of audition impairment, according to a address by the state’s Agency of Allowance in 2014. That was the year assembly defeated a agnate bill that would accept appropriate allowance behavior accounting for Mainers to accommodate a audition aid benefit. Accompaniment law ahead appropriate advantage for accouchement beneath the age of 18 and capped the insurer’s amount at $1,400.
Maine joins Arkansas, Illinois, New Hampshire and Rhode Island in acute audition aid advantage for both accouchement and adults, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
But all four states accept lower annual amounts than set out in Maine’s law.
“People who accept audition impairments tend to abstract themselves and that can advance to dementia and Alzheimer’s, but I additionally heard from bodies who had larboard the workforce because of audition loss,” said Handy, a Lewiston Democrat. “So to me, it is additionally a workforce development policy.”
He acicular to a contempo abstraction from Johns Hopkins University that shows links amid audition accident and cerebral abatement and dementia.
“Insurance advantage is not befitting clip with what we are advertent about the appulse of audition accident on an individual’s health,” Handy said.
Medicare does not awning audition aids or exams for applicable them, but some Medicare Advantage Affairs may action audition benefits.
Handy abstruse of the affair while advancement door-to-door for the Legislature in 2018.
“This is actually the abracadabra of how advancement works,” he said. Later, Handy was confronted with his own audition accident and abstruse that his allowance plan would awning alone up to $1,000 for audition aids.
He said some bodies charge audition aids that amount as abundant as $4,000 each, and abounding artlessly go without.
“The allowance affairs that are out there ambit from actually no audition advantage to accoutrement testing and appraisal and actual few awning audition aid costs and usually alone up to $1,000,” Handy said. “So the abroad amount can be appealing significant.”
Maine, the oldest accompaniment in the nation, is more abased on earlier workers, including abounding retirees abiding to the workforce, and audition abundantly is important for advice and job safety.
“Nobody should be affected out of the workforce because of a audition impairment,” Handy said.
Handy said that the 2014 address additionally bent that acute audition aid advantage could advance allowance premiums up by as abundant 47 cents a ages or $5.64 a year for up to $6,000 of audition aid coverage.
Handy’s bill anesthetized after action in the Legislature. It was active by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in June.
The law will amount accompaniment government about $215,000 a year to accommodate the audition aid allowances beneath accompaniment employees’ bloom allowance plans.
Opponents to the new mandate, including the Maine Accompaniment Chamber of Commerce, said the claim will advance up the amount of allowance premiums, authoritative affairs too big-ticket for some baby businesses that accommodate bloom allowance to employees.
“As our alignment has said afore this board in the past, allowable benefits, no amount how well-intentioned, serve no purpose if they advance bloom allowance premiums above the ability of either the employer or the employee,” Peter Gore, the chamber’s controlling carnality president, said in affidavit to the Legislature’s Bloom and Human Services Committee.
Karen Fraser, the administrator of the Maine Department of Labor’s Agency of Rehabilitation Services, told assembly that her agency will advice those with audition accident accretion admission to assignment or advance employment, including accouterment audition aids, but said that appeal generally outstrips accessible assets and the agency currently has cat-and-mouse lists for those defective audition aids.
In accounting testimony, Fraser said that during the 2018-2019 federal budgetary year her agency spent $546,000 on audition aids for some 265 workers in Maine.
While the agency took a aloof position on the new law, Fraser said her agency “sees immediate the annual of application for individuals with audition loss; it helps advance access to the community; increases ability and decreases assurance on added abutment programs.”
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