Bills currently flying through state legislative committees will radically change how health care is delivered and paid for in Minnesota if passed into law. Some state legislators think the answer to solving the high cost of health care and insuring the 7% of Minnesotans who are currently uninsured is to create another huge layer of expensive and inefficient nanny-state bureaucracy called the Insurance Exchange.
A critique of the Insurance Exchange reveals many problems. The Exchange will sell health insurance to all businesses for a fee. These fees will be ultimately passed along to Minnesotans – essentially an additional hidden tax. The legislature plans to spend at least $60 million just to create this new bureaucracy: $40 million is a tax on hospitals and health plans; $20 million more goes to set up the Health Insurance Exchange.
The bill specifies duties for each of the new state bureaucracies and others with expanded duties, including:
· Health Insurance Exchange
· Health Care Transformation Commission
· Health Improvement Fund
· Community Health Boards
· Indian Health Boards
· Care Coordination Advisory Committee
· Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement
· Minnesota Community Measurement
· Health Savings Reinvestment Fund
· Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology
· Savings Reinvestment Fund
· Health Benefit Set and Design Advisory Committee
· Health Care Value Reporting Organization
· Technology Advisory Committee
· Health Services Advisory Council
· MN Department of Health (that already employs more than 7,000 people)
· MN Department of Human Services
· MN Department of Commerce
· Community Health Centers
There’s a program to spend $250,000 to reward people who sign up for government health plans. Imagine that! We will bribe people to enroll in plans that we pay for with our taxes. Now that is a plan!
The bills mandate guarantee issue and community rating on individual health plans sold through the Exchange. Watch the uninsured rate soar among Minnesota’s young people as their premiums more than double. They even want government officials to use public schools to test the body mass index of our children! Then they will report this data to the Department of Health.
This bureaucracy will be given access to my family’s personal health care data without my permission. But they promise to keep the information safe and secure. Why don’t I believe them?
Government will gather all our private medical data, establish guidelines and pass legislation. The guidelines will focus on their definition of “unhealthy lifestyles”. The government will provide or reduce care and coverage to keep costs in check. Our tax dollars will fund media campaigns to chastise lifestyle choices. Smokers, drinkers and the obese will be the first targets.
Government’s access and exchange of private health care information is bad enough, but this new law also exempts members of the Exchange’s ruling board from all liability. Government assures us they will keep this private data safe and secure. But we won’t have to wait long for the first lawsuit.
The added administrative expense forced upon small businesses will likely not be affordable to many. Businesses will pass higher costs of doing business on to their customers, thus driving up the costs of goods and services of every business in the state. In cases where the administrative costs cannot be passed on or absorbed, businesses will likely be forced to close or move.
This is not rocket science. A simple way to reduce the cost of insurance would be to eliminate the mandates and open the market. Logical thinking suggests solutions that include tax reform, insurance reform and tort reform. Logical thinking would look at addressing the high cost of government managed health care and entitlement programs. Logical thinking would ask why government purchased health care cost 220% more than privately purchased coverage.
But it seems there’s a real lack of logical thinking at our state legislature. Our legislators’ answer is to sign people up to feed at the public trough and force the rest of us to purchase coverage only sold to us by the state. Before we force this new and unproven program upon the people of Minnesota, perhaps we should conduct a two-year trial with our state legislators. Let’s have them purchase their insurance through the Exchange and have their private health care data used in a trial to validate the viability and security of the system.
TAKE ACTION: Click here to sign the Free-Markets Health Care Petition.