House DFL Health Care Legislation Unveiled

03/27/2005

As promised last fall, on March 7 House Democrats introduced a bill providing details of their plan for making good health care coverage available to far more Minnesotans.

The bill was released at a press conference held at the Louisiana Cafe on Selby Avenue in St. Paul. The location was chosen to represent the problem small businesses have in providing health care coverage for their employees. Like across most of the restaurant industry, employers having no affordable insurance options means no health coverage for their employees.

The DFL health care initiative attacks the problem by opening up participation in state health care programs to small businesses and the self-employed. This move would reduce employer costs for providing coverage by 5 percent, and could reduce the cost of health care coverage for some families by almost one-third.

Duluth Rep. Tom Huntley, an acknowledged House leader on issues relating to health care, introduced the bill. Also present was House DFL leader Matt Entenza (St. Paul), Rep. Patti Fritz (Faribault) and several others.

“This bill was carefully designed to use proven existing programs and tools to provide health care access to many more Minnesotans than they currently serve,” said Huntley. The linchpin of the DFL plan is opening up participation in the state’s health care plans to self-employed people and businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Larger businesses typically already provide their employees with health care coverage.

Because the state’s programs already enroll very large numbers of people, the state has been able to use the negotiating power that such large numbers of participants provides to save money.

“Every Minnesotan has the right to adequate health,” Huntley said. “This is a way we can get many more Minnesotans covered without costing the state any money at all.”

“Every Minnesotan deserves at least the same quality of health care we, their legislators have,” said House DFL leader Matt Entenza (DFL-St. Paul). ?It’s a bill everybody ought to be able to support because the program it creates will provide that coverage without costing the state a dime.”

The bill specifies several health care coverage options. Some small business owners will both reduce their costs and secure better coverage and more options by buying into the plans the state currently offers its employees. Others will be able to buy into MinnesotaCare, the state’s low cost plan, to gain coverage. Through these programs, employers should be able to offer both a choice of coverage networks—the state currently offers several—and lower premiums.

This state’s employee health plan, covering legislators, state employees and their families, currently enrolls about 120,000 individuals. MinnesotaCare purchases coverage on behalf of more than 140,000 people.

Some of the plan’s other details would also likely reduce people’s co-payments and deductibles, by up to $3,800 per family annually, and eliminate lifetime benefit limits on coverage.

Both the state health plans and MinnesotaCare also offer affordable prescription medications. More than 785,000 Minnesotans currently lack any coverage and pay full price for their prescriptions. Even those who pay for private health care insurance often have co-payments for prescriptions of up to 50 percent of the retail price.

“Clearly, the Governor’s and the Republican’s plans for health care are taking our state in the wrong direction,” said Entenza. “The Governor’s RxConnect Web Site to Canadian pharmacies has reached only a very small portion of the population, and his budget proposal, if enacted, will actually reduce the number of working Minnesotans with health care coverage by about 27,000.”

“The Republican plan will merely transfer more of the cost for health care onto working families, and by providing no potential savings to employers will give them no incentive to provide coverage for their workers,” said Huntley.