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State Representative Leon Lillie
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-1188
For more information contact: Joan Nichols 651-29X-XXXX
NEWS COLUMN
Will Change Bring Health Care For All Americans?
2009 is becoming a year of big changes and challenges for Americans. I’m excited for the changes that are occurring in Washington DC and have high hopes that one of our biggest problems – health care – will be addressed in a manner that will make health care a right extended to all American individuals and families.
Our people and policymakers are clearly poised for such change as the cost, quality, and accessibility of health care have become major legislative and policy issues in our state and in our country. Substantial increases in the cost of health care have placed considerable stress on federal, state and household budgets, as well as the employment-based health insurance system.
Currently we live in a working world where the fate of classes of employees – those with full benefits, partial benefits, or no benefits – is left to the dictate of 6 million employers. Still, I have particular high hopes that change is on the way to move health care and insurance in the right direction to make health care and insurance a part of a national set of minimum employment rights for workers.
My hopes are high for such health care rights because in the next several weeks, Congress will be considering the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009. This package is the first crucial step in a concerted effort to jumpstart our economy by making carefully targeted priority investments with built-in accountability measures. Lowering health care costs and helping workers hurt by the economy is among our new administration’s top priorities.
Quality health care should be the right of every American and Minnesotan. In our community we are fortunate to live in an area with great health care facilities and staff…but strongly feel we need to all have access. Today, the cost of health care is one of the main budget items for the average Minnesota family. One out of five Minnesotans pay more than 10% of their income for health care and an additional 250,000 Minnesotans with insurance pay more than 25% of their income for health care. I am looking forward to changing these numbers as state and national policy makers work to make health care and insurance a right, not a benefit.
Please feel free to call or write me on this issue or any other state or local issue by phone (651) 296-1188, by mail at 369 State Office Building, 100 Martin Luther King Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55155 or via e-mail at rep.leon.lillie@house.mn.
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