VIDEO: Senator Collins Joins Steve Michaud of Maine Hospital Association for Fireside Chat

At American Hospital Association's Annual Meeting, Senator Collins discusses efforts to support Maine patients and providers, lower health care costs.

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Click HERE to watch and HERE to download video of the full discussion

WASHINGTON, D.C. - This week, U.S. Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, joined Steve Michaud, the longtime President of the Maine Hospital Association, for a conversation at the American Hospital Association's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., about the challenges facing our nation's health care system and how she is working to address them. Senator Collins highlighted her efforts to fund biomedical research and to create the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP). Maine received $190 million for rural health care providers through the RHTP last December, the first of five annual installments. She also discussed several pieces of bipartisan legislation she is working to pass this year, including a bill to improve the affordability of insulin by capping out of pocket costs at $35 and two other bills that provide support to caregivers.

On Biomedical Research Funding:

Steve Michaud: Senator Collins, my good friend, welcome. Thank you for being here with us today. Thank you for everything you've done for the hospitals in Maine and across the country.... First of all, we thank you for your unbelievable leadership there in appropriations. I know the State of Maine sure does know what the benefit is of having the Chair of Appropriations as their Senator… we've seen the impact of the investments in hospitals and health care, but also across the State of Maine, what you've done for the Maine economy, but you also, at a national level, have invested in research and other healthcare programs that are important to everybody in this room. So, question is: how do we help you? How do we help ourselves? How do we sustain the level of investment you've made in those critical programs?

Senator Collins: I have worked extremely hard throughout my time in the Senate on health care issues. They're the issues that I think affect every single family in our country, and that I care deeply about. In this last Congress, when I became Chair of the Appropriations Committee, I looked at the President's budget, and I was very alarmed at the cutbacks that were proposed in a lot of areas of medical research. An example is the National Institutes of Health, where the President's first budget proposed a reduction of 41%... it also would have decimated the National Science Foundation and slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control, all so important to a healthy America. So, I worked in a bipartisan way, and I'm pleased to say that not only did we reject OMB's cut of 41% in NIH and the decimation of the National Science Foundation, but we actually increased funding… for NIH. This year, the President's budget did a little bit better. Russ Vought submitted a 12% cut. I still don't want that. We need to make sure that America continues to be the global leader in biomedical research, and that's my goal. I don't want to lose our young scientists and researchers to other countries like China.

On the Rural Health Transformation Program:

Steve Michaud: The Rural Health [Transformation] fund, something near and dear to our hearts.... First of all, thank you. We all, I think we know why there is even a fund in existence, and that was your work on that. And we thank you for that. It has enormous potential… for rural states like ours, there's no question, and it's for all rural states, but we're now faced with implementation…. What is your vision of an effective rollout…. What should we be talking about with Congress in order to make sure this is implemented the way, at least for sure, you intended?

Senator Collins: It represents the largest investment in rural health care in two decades. In 2003, I came up with having a $25 billion rural health care bill that was attached to a tax bill during the Bush Administration. So, when the Administration was trying hard to get my vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill, which had very good tax provisions in it, but in my view, very harmful Medicaid cut provisions in it, I proposed from the very beginning that we have a bill to help our rural health care, our rural providers, our rural health clinics. The hospitals in particular were a major focus of mine because I was really concerned about how our rural hospitals would survive…. I think that is critically important for us to work together to shape what the next tranche is going to be. But this program is potentially, literally lifesaving. What I found in my state is, if you lose the rural hospital or the rural health clinic or the providers, people feel they can't live in that area of the state. We've got obstetrics deserts in the State of Maine and that, I'm sure, is common throughout rural parts of the country. That's something that this fund needs to help us solve.

On the INSULIN Act:

Senator Collins: I think we're going to see an insulin bill come to the floor. Insulin has been around for more than 100 years, and it should not be as expensive as it is. Three of the major pharmaceutical companies have capped the cost per month, but that only applies to Medicare and maybe Medicaid. But if you have private insurance, or if you're uninsured, you don't benefit from that cap. So, again, Senator Shaheen and I have a bill that I think the HELP Committee is likely to approve, so that's something I think will make a difference.

On Alzheimer's and Caregiving:

Senator Collins: As someone whose life has been touched by Alzheimer's disease-I lost my father, my grandfather, two uncles and a brother-in-law-I know firsthand how devastating that disease is. And I know how hard it was for my mother, for eight years, to take care of my father at home before he went into the Veterans' Home in our hometown of Caribou. But just recently, a neighbor of mine in Bangor was trying to take care of his sick wife, then he unfortunately developed health problems. That's not uncommon. Caregiving takes a tremendous toll on the family members-tremendous. We need more respite care so that they can have a break from that 24/7 care of their loved one. But we also need to help caregivers who have dropped out of the workforce in order to take care of a sick child or a sick parent. Right now, they're losing out financially, but they're also losing out for when they retire. So, Senator Mark Warner and I have recently introduced two bills, and basically what they do is, when the caregiver returns to the workforce, they can do catch-up contributions to their retirement plan, like their 401K… 53% of caregivers get no compensation whatsoever, and they're also losing out when they retire. So, I want to allow them to catch up for that year or years that they spent out of the workforce simply because they were caring for a loved one. I think that is the least we can do.

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