MLA Health Insurance Navigator Departs

This month the MLA says good-bye to Bridget Thornton, the MLA’s health insurance Navigator. Thornton came to the MLA just eleven months ago from the Massachusetts Chapter of the ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) Association, where she was the care services coordinator. She successfully took over the complex task of assisting Maine lobstermen and their families to find affordable health insurance plans. Federal funding for health insurance Navigators was cut sharply this year, effectively eliminating Thornton’s position.

“I learned a lot in a short period of time,” Thornton said. “There are a lot of health insurance resources here in Maine, a really good group of people. I could shoot a question to the [Affordable Care Act] network or the Consumers for Affordable Health Care help line at any time. That was huge.” During her time at the MLA, Thornton, whose family lives on Long Island in Casco Bay, learned even more about the state’s lobster fishery and the issues currently facing it. “I’ve been around lobstermen since I was a kid. They were my neighbors and friends. But this was different,” Thornton said. “I saw that through the MLA, lobstermen throughout the state have the opportunity to have input in what happens. No one is just sitting around in the MLA office making decisions.

Every lobsterman literally has a way of being a part of this and having their voices heard through the board.” During her tenure, lobstermen have faced major issues, including the possibility of additional federal regulations to protect right whales and the looming bait crisis.Thornton received her graduate degree in social work from the University of New England, which gave her a different perspective on her work as a health insurance Navigator. “Health insurance in general is really complicated, even for those who get insurance through work. That’s why this position was so great, to be able to find answers to people’s questions,” she said. Thornton has mixed feelings about the Health Insurance Marketplace and the plans available to fishermen through the Affordable Care Act. “Right now they are not spending enough time fixing real problems in the system and are just applying Band-aids.

The program’s purpose was well intentioned but now prices are way up,” she noted.During her time as health insurance Navigator, Thornton worked with lobstermen from all along the coast. Sometimes the issues were complex and took many hours on the phone to resolve. Other times she was simply an encouraging voice helping a lobsterman fill out complicated forms. “One gentleman on Vinalhaven was just so grateful to be able to go through the process with me. He was appreciative because I understood his community. Another guy down in Port Clyde told me after we finished up that I should come down there and he’d put a ‘bucket of bugs’ in my car.” The straightforwardness of the people she worked with and the sense of being helpful provided Thornton with a lot of satisfaction during her months with the MLA. “They are honest and they want you to be honest as well.

Lobstermen are blunt and I love that,” she said. “We are so sad to have to say good-bye to Bridget. She has done an amazing job helping so many lobstermen and their families with health insurance. Everyone who dealt with her benefitted from her smarts and sense of humor combined with genuine kindness and patience. We are really going to miss her,” said MLA’s executive director, Patrice McCarron. “And unfortunately, we won’t have anyone on staff this fall to help lobstermen with health insurance.”Continuing to help people is the primary motivation for Thornton as she moves forward in her career. Public health is a broad field in which she believes her social work skills can be usefully applied. She notes that the World Health Organization defines health as not solely the absence of disease or infirmity but as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” “We don’t often look at the many aspects of health,” she said. “It has to do with how you are in your community and in your environment as well as your physical health.”