“If this plan seems audacious to you, that’s good, because that is the direction we must set ourselves,” Shah told the crowd at a town hall in Portland on Tuesday.
PORTLAND, Maine — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah, who led the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention for four years, has a new health care plan for the state.
“Health care is a human right for all, not a privilege for the few,” Shah told a crowd of 100 people who attended his town hall in Portland on Tuesday night, where he spoke in detail about his plan posted online last week. “If this plan seems audacious to you, that’s good, because that is the direction we must set ourselves.”
Shah warned that “health care in Maine is careening toward a crisis” of affordability and access with families “paying more and getting less” while constantly fighting their health insurance companies to approve medical procedures and pay their bills.
“Times of crisis call for bold leadership. Plans that nibble around the edges belong to yesterday. We must be motivated by the fierce urgency of now,” Shah said in his remarks, repeating a phrase from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that was frequently invoked by President Barack Obama.
Shah’s plan aims to improve the private insurance coverage most people already have with cost relief.
Shah said in an interview before the town hall, “The governor, working with the legislature, can institute caps that cap how much any household is paying in co-pays or deductibles based on their annual household salary.”
Shah’s plan would seek to end “prior authorization” by insurance companies, which often interferes with routine and ongoing care.
“Under my plan, you get the care that your doctor needs, not when you get a permission slip from the insurance company,” he said.
Citing a shortage of medical providers in Maine, Shah wants to recruit more doctors and nurses by extending medical school loan forgiveness and funding at least 150 to 200 additional clinical training slots over the next four to eight years.
He said Maine had only 40 primary care physician residency slots last year, and half of those trainees ended up leaving the state.
Shah said in the interview, “Where health care providers train, they are more likely to stay. We can couple those expanded training opportunities with even more loan forgiveness to make it financially easier for folks, not just to stay in Maine generally, but specifically to move to rural areas.”
Shah’s plan demands insurance companies “pay their fair share” to stabilize Maine’s rural hospitals, which are hurting from federal cuts to Medicaid and now have a dearth of maternity wards.
Shah told his audience, “If you’re in Calais and you’re expecting a baby, your number one fear is whether you’re going to make it to Bangor in time. That should not have to be the case. It’s unacceptable in 2026.”
Shah also said he wants to shore up reproductive services and allow women to obtain birth control pills without an extra doctor’s visit.
Shah is the first Democratic candidate for governor to have submitted a complete petition with more than the required 2,000 signatures of registered party voters to get on the June 9 primary ballot.
After starting at the Maine CDC in the fall of 2019, Shah led the state’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, he said on Tuesday, “achieving the highest vaccination rates and among the lowest age-adjusted death rates, not only in the nation but arguably in the world.”
In 2023, the Biden administration tapped him to serve as principal deputy director of the U.S. CDC. He resigned in February 2025 at the start of the second Trump administration, which appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as health secretary.
Shah said on Tuesday, “We cannot control the chaos that is coming out of RFK’s CDC. But in Maine, vaccine recommendations will be based on science and not politics so that preventable diseases stay prevented. Simply put, when the Trump administration undermines public health, my administration will protect the health of Mainers.”
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