Steer clear of single payer
By now you know that Republicans’ Reinsurance program has been a fantastic success for cleaning up the MNsure mess. The New York Times wrote about how successful it was, and recently the Minnesota Department of Commerce announced that every insurer will reduce individual market rates again in 2019. In fact, one health care researcher from Georgetown raved that she had “yet to see a state report across-the-board decreases as Minnesota has.”
Republicans have righted the ship over the last couple of years, but many of you reading this are undoubtedly thinking, “that’s great Mike, but my family is still paying way too much!”
Believe me, I agree. It’s something that keeps me up at night, and we are going to keep working until coverage is affordable for every Minnesotan. Our focus continues to be on creative ideas to improve competitiveness, improve prices, and add transparency.
We’re no longer on the edge of disaster, but one misstep could send us right back. We have to avoid the mistakes that almost killed our market in the first place.
Like single-payer health insurance. (Supporters like to call it “Medicare for All” or “MinnesotaCare buy-in.”) It sounds enticing, but once you scratch the surface there are a lot of red flags.
- First, it’s very, very expensive. About $35 billion, in fact. To put that in perspective, our $48 billion biennial state budget would have to double over night just to cover the cost. What do you think that would do to your tax bill?!
- Almost 40% of hospitals are already losing money. If a tsunami of people suddenly move off private insurance and on to public plans, which have lower payment rates, hospitals will not be able to survive. It’s why the Minnesota Hospitals Association opposes MinnesotaCare buy-in.
- Vermont and California – hardly states that anyone would describe as small government bastions – abandoned their single payer experiments because they were too expensive. In Vermont, they discovered it would have almost doubled the annual state budget from $5m to over $9m. In California, the price tag was $400 billion annually.
Finally, you have likely heard that Republicans want to eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions. I cannot emphasize this enough: It is an absolute shameful lie, and anyone who repeats it is not interested in a serious discussion. Republicans support coverage for preexisting conditions, but we simply prefer bringing back and improving a program called MCHA (Minnesota Comprehensive Health Assessment), which was how we covered individuals with preexisting conditions prior to Obamacare.
Fixing our health care system will require bipartisan compromise, and I am committed to working with anyone and everyone to help us get there. But we have to focus on reforms that put consumers first and stimulate market competitiveness.
One thing I know: after government boondoggles with MNLARS, MNsure, elder abuse, child care assistance fraud, security breaches at DHS, and everything else, there is no way we should trust government bureaucrats to take over our health care.