ST. PAUL – State Representative Bob Gunther (R-Fairmont) said the bad news continues for Obamacare in Minnesota, as MNsure’s largest commercial provider with the lowest rates, PreferredOne, has decided it will no longer offer plans through the exchange for 2015.
“It is alarming that 59 percent of the Minnesotans who utilized MNsure and chose PreferredOne as their provider are now left to wonder what happens next,” Gunther said.
According to MNsure documents, more than 30,000 Minnesotans are impacted. Gunther said those residents can renew their plan with PreferredOne outside of MNsure, but if they make that choice they could lose the tax credits they received through MNsure. On the other hand, if they choose to stay on MNsure, they could lose access to the doctors they had been seeing their current plan.
MNsure has been plagued with problems since going online. Gunther said Minnesota has already wasted $160 million for MNsure’s rollout, and since then we have had a significant data privacy breach, continued technology problems resulting in manual processing of applications, astoundingly bad enrollment figures, and now a bailout by the program’s largest commercial provider.
“Governor Dayton promised to improve this program, but what has he done?” Gunther wondered. “He and his fellow Democrats sat on their hands last session hoping the problems would go away, but they’ve actually increased. At some point Governor Dayton and legislative leadership need to be held accountable for their actions, or in this case, continued inaction. The tens of thousands of Minnesotans who are now impacted by this latest MNsure news deserve some answers.”