Governor LePage Believes Maine Should Stop Paying for Methadone Help Change His Mind

National Alliance for Medication Assisted Recovery
 
Press Release

Contact Persons:
Joycelyn Woods, Executive Director, edirector@methadone.org
Roxanne Baker, President, president@methadone.org
Phone/Fax: 212-595-NAMA

He Says:

Maine Care will pay for Methadone when most insurance carriers won't. Someone can go to the Discovery Center in Bangor. They can request an increase and receive it that day. They have no programs for decreasing or getting off methadone. They compare it to having Diabetes! On top of paying for methadone, they all get reimbursed for travel from PenCap! It is a legal drug dealer and we the tax payers are footing the bill!

We Have Heard It Before, Haven’t We?

During December many advocates primarily professionals have written letters to the governor. However, as you can see from his comments he has not been convinced and is obviously cynical about the information he has received. Usually NAMA Recovery does something similar but instead our letter voices the concerns of patients on behalf of the patients being affected, or in this case methadone patients in Maine. Our letter notes the same evidence and research about methadone that the advocates that are professionals use. Our new project Stop Stigma Now even included a DVD with the letter. But NAMA Recovery can do something different and perhaps better because we can tell the governor how methadone has changed our lives.

What Can We Do?

Instead of writing the usual letter we are asking patients to write a letter to the governor to tell him that methadone does work and that we are the proof!

And we can ask our professional friends to hand out this information to patients. Programs can help by telling patients.

See Attached Instructions
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