The cost of health insurance is creating an unmanageable burden for businesses and a nightmare for families who can’t afford to get sick. We can’t afford the “cost savings” that managed care and insurance conglomerates provide from their skyscrapers and elegant offices. It’s time to step in and make sure everyone has health care that they can manage.
Health insurance and drug companies that make huge profits by rationing care want you to believe that “the government” shouldn’t involve itself in health care coverage. They argue that the private sector is more “efficient,” but the wide spread support and success of Medicare for our seniors prove that we can create a competitive and efficient health care system. If the cost of the program is directed to providing expanded services instead of expanded profits we could provide health care to all Minnesotans.
The problem with the single payer model is trying to do this in isolation from the rest of the country. But while we work on getting the necessary changes from Congress, we can’t sit idly by. We need to protect the programs that we have in place including MinnesotaCare for working families of moderate means and the safety net programs for low income individuals who cannot pay for care and would otherwise be forced to use much more costly emergency rooms.
We can expand our current, affordable programs to be certain that no child and no senior goes without the care they need and deserve. We can include others for whom health coverage is unaffordable such as small business owners trying to insure their workers. These expansions are affordable if we use cost savings from making the system more efficient – keeping all but the true emergencies out of emergency rooms, for example.
We also need to ensure that people without adequate coverage can get the prescriptions they need. I passed legislation to allow people in these circumstances to be able to access the state purchasing system that we use to acquire medicine for people in state facilities, but the executive branch never implemented it. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it would bring uninsured consumers’ costs down significantly. Health care is the most basic of rights that no Minnesotan should have to go without. We must all find a way to make that happen.
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