Lawmakers scramble to respond to health care spikes
Republican and Democratic leaders in the Legislature generally agreed Friday that there needs to be action soon to come up with a way to help 250,000 Minnesotans who are facing big increases in their health insurance rates next year. But they disagree over when a possible special legislative session should be called and what legislation should be considered.
Democrats in the Minnesota House say lawmakers should free-up as much as $100 million next year to help people who will see big premium hikes.
Minority Leader Paul Thissen, DFL- Minneapolis, said the proposal would rebate money to Minnesotans who have to pay more than 10 percent of their income for health coverage.
"If Minnesotans are paying more than that they would submit that information, and the state would issue them a rebate," Thissen said. "It would just be until 2017 until we can figure out a longer term solution."
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The money for the rebates could come from reversing a planned cigarette tax cut and from surplus money in a health care access fund, Thissen said.
The state Commerce Department announced last month that rates for health insurance plans purchased on the individual market would rise an average of 50 to 67 percent in 2017. About 5 percent of Minnesotans buy their insurance on the individual market.
Most Minnesotans get their insurance through the workplace or public programs, and those rates are much more stable than those on the individual market.
House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Zimmerman, spent time Friday in St. Cloud and in St. Paul with some Minnesotans who contacted the Legislature with concerns about the rate hikes. The two sides need to come up with something as soon as possible, Daudt said, and waiting until after next month's election is not acceptable.
"I think it's incredibly insensitive for us to say to Minnesotans, 'We need you to just pause your lives and pause your worry and your stress, worrying about whether you'll have health insurance on Jan. 1 and just wait for a month while we all run through an election here,'" he said. "And I better never hear a legislator say that in this city when folks are literally worried about where they're going to get health insurance."
Both sides are blaming each other for the expensive and unstable individual market.
Senate Democrats said they had offered numerous fixes to the problem during the last regular session and that House Republicans refused to act on them.
Gov. Mark Dayton said earlier this week he is willing to consider calling a special session to address the rising rates, but not until after the Nov. 8 election.