Rep. Dean Cray of Palmyra is currently serving his sixth, non-consecutive term in the Maine House representing District 69.

The cost of living has been climbing here in Maine. The three biggest drivers when it comes to the high cost of living are utilities, housing and health care costs. Housing costs in Maine have gone up 187% in the last decade, and this year it is anticipated utilities will go up by $150.

While for some health care isn’t a regular expense like housing and utilities, the fact of the matter is, with skyrocketing prices, a health emergency, diagnosis or chronic illness can be devastating financially.

Medical care is incredibly expensive, and for our friends and fellow citizens who live in rural areas, there are limited options and those providers are often at risk of closure due to the financial strain they experience.

Thankfully there’s a program that was created in 1992 that helps these kinds of facilities keep their doors open. It’s called the 340B Drug Discount Program, and the most important thing to remember about 340B is it doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime.

Unfortunately, the program has been constantly under attack from the pharmaceutical companies. These companies hate this program because it encourages them to sell their medications to safety net health care providers — especially in rural areas — at a discounted price.

The way it works is providers use the savings from the discounts to pay for care that patients with low incomes desperately need but cannot afford. The providers that participate in the 340B program include disproportionate share hospitals, children’s hospitals, critical access hospitals (CAHs) and more.

If you haven’t heard the term critical access hospital before, they are hospitals that are located in a rural area, have 25 (or fewer) inpatient beds, provide 24-hour emergency care and keep the average length of acute inpatient stays to just 96 hours or less. These are the very kinds of hospitals the majority of Mainers rely on.

This all from first glance is simple and straightforward. So why would there possibly be any problem with a program that costs taxpayers nothing? Quite simply put, it’s just big business doing what big business does. Their focus is inevitably on driving up their own stock prices and earnings, even if that means taxpayers could end up on the hook for a bailout due to irresponsible and short-sighted actions on their part.

Pharmaceutical companies are spending hundreds of millions lobbying elected officials to try and persuade them to gut the 340B program through so-called “reform.” Mainers should say “no, thanks” to the drug companies. Over 60% of our population lives in rural areas and they depend on these rural providers in some cases for their very lives. Reforming the program out of existence means these people won’t have access to medical care and if they’re lucky enough to have it, there’s no way they could afford it.

It’s important to continue to remind our elected officials in Washington, D.C., that they represent us. We sent them there to fight for us. Way too often, rural Americans are quickly forgotten as these officials walk the halls of Congress. We must remind them that they’re in our capital to represent us, not drug companies.