Category: Health Care

by Dave Mindeman

There is a fine line that elected officials have to walk. It's the line between (a) doing what's best for your constituents and (b) doing what is poltically beneficial for yourself.

Governor Pawlenty has thrown (a) out the window and now his only policy test is what will get him another few votes in Iowa.

Minnesota is in massive deficit and has health care issues. When it comes to health care, the state has three choices regarding how it can alleviate that. 1) Raise taxes, 2) Accept Federal Money when offered, or 3) throw people off the programs.

We are well aware of how Pawlenty utilizes option 1 -- he doesn't. Yesterday option 2 seems to have been eliminated as well. That leaves option 3, which has already been utilized more than we are comfortable with, but it is all we have left.

Tom Emmer concurs with it all, despite his "new direction".

Here's Pawlenty's reasoning:

Pawlenty is directing all executive branch departments and agencies to not apply for grants or other funding connected to the federal law unless approved by his office or required by law. His executive order described the federal law as "a dramatic attempt to assert federal command and control" of the country's health care system. He also wrote that the law "includes unprecedented intrusions into individual liberty."

Minnesota pays a lot in Federal taxes. Like it or not, some of those taxes are involved in Federal Health Care. Even if you think it is "too much Federal control", we still have needs to meet that are immediate. Some of those taxes are meant for Medical Assistance.....they are meant to help deal with recessionary pressures on our health care system.

By refusing money that has been offered (and that we have basically funded ourselves), Pawlenty is making a personal political statement at the expense of real needs of Minnesota citizens.

The GOP has been using an attack ad on Mark Dayton claiming that he would be "Minnesota's worst governor"...(all evidence to the contrary).

Well the ad is meaningless.

We already have the gold standard of "worst governor" sitting in the executive mansion right now.

Category: Health Care

by Dave Mindeman

In Missouri they have a question on the ballot that is supposed to be some kind of "test" for the Federal Health Care Program....

Missouri's Proposition C is a test of support for part of the new federal health care law, as voters decide if Missouri residents should be allowed to opt out of mandatory health insurance. Early returns show the measure succeeding handily, with more than 70 percent voting to allow residents to opt out.

Here is a more realistic question that I would like proposed:

Question: Would you like the freedom to opt out of paying health insurance provided you sign a waiver that you can only get health care if you agree to pay catch up premiums for every year you have NOT had health insurance up to that point? And you also waive any future rights to receive any government assistance if you opt out.

Think about it.

Everybody that tells you they do not want the government involved in their decison to buy health insurance, are the same people who would yell the loudest when they will be denied such coverage because of a pre-existing condition. And then demand that the government help them with their hospital and doctor bills when they have an illness or chronic disease.

Just a thought.

Category: Health Care

by Dave Mindeman

Sooner or later a person's face was going to be put on this issue and Eric Halstensen is today's. I'm talking about GAMC funding -- the health funding for the poor that the legislature struggled to find a way to fund, against an intransigent governor. Those of you who have read this blog before know how upset I have been with this faux remedy for GAMC funding.

Frankly, it is no remedy at all and it is an insult to the dignity of people who are struggling to survive. Eric Halstensen's story is featured in this Star Tribune article by Lora Pabst and it outlines his particular issue in a very human way.

Now, I am not crass enough to contend that this is the way all of the people like Eric are being treated. I suspect that a number of them are getting along OK and being taken care of as they were before. At least some of them. But the availabilty of needed medical care, at least under this program, depends on where you live or on whom you can get to help you navigate the distance and paperwork needed to find that care.

I hope you read the particulars of Eric's plight because it speaks to a much larger issue. The idea of what health care really is in this country. I often hear Republicans talk about health care as if it were like shopping for a commodity....oh, say like kumquats. They tell us all we need is more competition....make it more consumer based. Yeah, right.

There is one very basic flaw in that argument. We don't have much say regarding our underlying health care conditions. Oh, sure, we can watch our weight, eat healthier foods, get generic drugs and make sure we get preventative care. That is certainly part of the deal.

But Eric didn't choose to get a possible brain tumor. My mother didn't ask to die of a heart attack in her 50's. My father didn't want that stroke in his 40's or Myasthenia Gravis in his 60's. My brother-in-law didn't count on being diabetic or my niece to get Crohn's disease.

We have choices about kumquats....which ones to buy and where to buy them, but we often don't get to choose whether or not we get a chronic or life threatening disease. And when they do happen, we don't get a choice about when it happens either. It might hit us when our farm is struggling to get by or it might find us when we get laid off. Or it might overwhelm us when our kid heads off to college.

You hear about the Federal Health plan being forced down our throats. That we should have a choice about whether or not we need to have health insurance. Well, I would argue that we shouldn't need to have that choice -- every single American should have their health coverage guaranteed. It is as simple as that.

With all the money we spend on our current system, doesn't it bother anyone that we pay more and get less than almost every other developed country in the world? Does that make sense?

I doubt it makes sense to Eric Halstensen. All he wants is to know is if he will be around in 6 months or a year. He wants to get back to being a productive worker in this society, but before he gets that chance, he will probably get swallowed up in either a mountain of debt or a blizzard of paper work or worse.....

We think that the old adage about the American dream still applies. You work hard, you will make it. But that is not true anymore. If you work hard but get sick without adequate health coverage, you're going to fail. It doesn't matter how hard you try or even if you did all the right things. A chronic illness or an accident can destroy it all...completely.

We still have that Federal opt in option still dangling out there for Minnesota. It not only would solve Eric Halstensen's problem, but a heckuva lot of others people's problems as well.

But then Pawlenty and Emmer and the MN GOP aren't interested in solving problems. No, they'd rather chase felons in voting booths, or balance the books the backs of state employees and food service workers, or force State Auditor Rebecca Otto to eat at McDonalds, or have everybody check under the sofa for illegal immigrants, or have bridges fall down, or tell us that government is making us "slaves".

No, the Republican Party hasn't really been at all interested in solving problems.... and the cost and scope of health care is the biggest one of all.

Just ask Eric Halstensen.