Dear Editor:

In June, MaineHealth announced it was on a path to close the labor and delivery unit at Miles hospital. Immediately, a group of young women emerged from nowhere. In two months, the Miles Delivers Action Campaign (MDAC) built an organization which brought the demise of rural birthing centers in Maine to the forefront of the healthcare debate. MDAC precipitated an emergency August meeting of the Maine legislature’s ‘Joint Standing Committee on Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services’ (HCIFS).

The committee members volunteered their time even though the legislature was not in session.

I was expecting much of the hearing to be boring. It was fascinating. The level of preparation, the attention to detail, and the collegiate way the committee works was impressive. You could not tell Democrat from Republican as they collectively struggled to do good for Mainers within the context of what we all know is a nationally broken healthcare system.

In one day, the HCIFS gave me a whole new appreciation of our legislature.

Technical presentations in the morning from MaineHealth and other healthcare providers were followed by public comment. It took until 5 p.m. to get to the last speaker of the day: Lincoln County’s Senator, Cameron Reny, who used her three-minute opportunity to powerfully explain why she opposed the closure. Jenny Mahyer, who is running to represent House District 46, in which Miles hospital is situated, has also come out strongly in support of a moratorium on closure.

Following the hearing the HCIFS committee wrote to MaineHealth requesting the closure decision be postponed long enough to provide time for the public discussion and independent assessment that has so far been denied.

A group of young mothers and mothers-to-be refused to accept that this corporate-driven decision is final. The community rallied round. Our underpaid and underappreciated legislators took time out of their summer recess to step in. Can you think of another state where this would have happened?  

It remains to be seen if MaineHealth will take this opportunity to rebuild some of the bridges to the community that have been burned in recent months. Regardless, this has been, and continues to be, a powerful illustration of what makes Maine so special.

Nigel Calder 

Newcastle