Issue Position: Health Care for All

Issue Position

Minnesota must move to a system of universal, single-payer health care. We must eliminate the "middleman" between people and the health care they need.

Minnesotans should not have to worry about getting the health care they need--yet this is the reality for too many. For some, the cost of insurance is too high. For others who have insurance, the out of pocket costs are more than they can afford. For those on public programs, getting care can still be a challenge.

In Minnesota, as in the rest of America, our system wastes about a third of every health care dollar to figure out who should get care, how much, and at what price. Minnesota can lead the nation in moving toward a system where people can choose who provides their health care but don't have to choose or deal with insurance companies. Whether we call this "single payer," "Medicare for All," or "Universal Health Care," we must remove the barriers between Minnesotans and the health care they need.

We can start here by getting insurance companies out of our public programs. Minnesota contracts with insurance companies to cover the 1.1 million Minnesotans on Medicaid or on MinnesotaCare, our public health care programs,. These companies then contract with doctors, hospitals, and others to provide care. Even Minnesotans on a public health care program must deal with insurance companies, while health care providers must deal with multiple insurance companies for patients on public programs.

It is time to cut out the middleman. Our state can take back control and improve our public programs by contracting directly with healthcare providers on behalf of patients. The only thing stopping us is the power that these big insurers have over Minnesota's government.

We can also allow Minnesotans to buy health insurance through the public MinnesotaCare program. MinnesotaCare has been offered in Minnesota for about 27 years for low-income working people who could not otherwise afford insurance. Governor Dayton has proposed that all Minnesotans be offered the opportunity to "buy-in" to MinnesotaCare at full cost. Republicans oppose this idea, most likely because the insurance industry opposes it.

The Republican solution to skyrocketing health insurance costs has been to attack the Affordable Care Act and attack MNSure (which is a place to buy insurance that does not design policies or set rates). In 2017, the Republican-led legislature spent $800 million to subsidize the insurance companies in hopes they would reduce premiums for the 2.5% of Minnesotans who buy insurance entirely from their own pockets, but consumers have seen little benefit.

In 2018, Republicans in the Minnesota legislature have focused on ways to kick people off of public health insurance instead of helping more Minnesotans get access to health care. This cynical plan tries to pit Minnesotans against each other by promoting the myth that some people are getting something they don't "deserve," and it moves us in the wrong direction.

I believe that essential healthcare is--or should be--a human right. Making high quality healthcare accessible and affordable to all would be an enormous boost for Minnesota's economy, because healthy people are more productive, and no one would be stuck in the wrong job just for health insurance. We can create a Minnesota health care system that is high quality, affordable and easy to access FOR ALL if we have the political will to do it.

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