House OKs contentious HHS bill

04/30/2005

From the Marshall Independent
By Independent Staff and The Associated Press

ST. PAUL—Over bitter objections from some Democrats, the Republican-controlled House approved an $8.1 billion health budget bill Friday that would eliminate public health insurance for at least 24,000 adults.

The bill passed on a vote of 74-59.

The legislation cuts deeper than Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s proposal to remove 22,500 adults from state health programs, according to updated projections from the Department of Human Services. Most of the reductions would fall on childless adults who use the MinnesotaCare program.

Democrats predicted higher costs across the health care system because more people would lack insurance and end up needing costly care in hospital emergency rooms. They said Minnesotans also would pay $10 million more in fees for items such as birth and death certificates.

Rep. Barb Goodwin, DFL-Columbia Heights, called the package a ‘’piece of crap.’’

‘’There’s no reason for anybody to vote for this bill,’’ she said near the end of a floor debate that lasted more than five-and-a-half hours. ‘’It’s setting Minnesota back. It’s putting Minnesota into the race to the bottom.’’

Republicans said the package would put the brakes on runaway health costs while still leaving the state with more extensive public insurance coverage than all its neighbors. Other state insurance programs could take the poorest MinnesotaCare members and would cover more medical services for them, said Rep. Fran Bradley, R-Rochester, the bill’s author.

‘’The question before the body today and to a greater extent before our state is whether we address the issue of skyrocketing health care costs in our welfare and human services programs, or we simply hope it goes away,’’ said House Majority Leader Erik Paulsen, R-Eden Prairie. ‘’The issue is not going to go away.’’

State Rep. Marty Seifert said the bill still provides a big increase to the health and human services budget—just not as big as previously expected. He said the state couldn’t afford to continue 15 to 18 percentage point increases to the HHS budget.

“It’s a 14 percent (increase) instead of 18 percent,” Seifert said. “We just slowed the growth down.”

Seifert said the cuts to insurance recipients came by changing eligibility requirements—“tweaking” the eligibility from 190 percent of poverty to 175 percent.

“With just a few percentage points, you save millions of dollars,” Seifert said. “We tried to be as generous as we could without busting the bank.”
Seifert said there are good things in the bill, including an increase in the cost-of-living-adjustment for nursing home workers, a repeal of liens on estates, and a reduction in fees paid by parents of disabled.

Before the debate, Democrats held a news conference on the Capitol steps with MinnesotaCare members who would lose their insurance if the House bill prevails.

Alton Wood, a single, childless group home worker from Duluth, said he’d probably be dead without the program, which helped pay for an operation to prop open his arteries. Without the plan, his medications would cost about $350 a month instead of a $3 co-payment for each drug.

‘’MinnesotaCare is necessary,’’ Wood said. ‘’I just pray that this thing keeps up.’’

Bradley said the House bill would eliminate MinnesotaCare insurance for 41,800 people, but about 17,700 of them would qualify for other government health plans.

The numbers from the Human Services Department are lower than the department’s projections earlier this year, which showed that Pawlenty’s plan would have cut health care for 27,000 adults by 2007, with the House bill adding another 2,700 on top of that. Projections changed after the state’s February budget forecast, a department analyst said.

The House bill would tap the state’s general fund for $7.3 billion, with additional funding from provider taxes collected in the Health Care Access Fund.

The package also has assistance to move people with disabilities out of state homes, aid for rural pharmacies, money for methamphetamine treatment and grants to organizations that help women carry through with unplanned pregnancies