America is in the midst of the most significant expansion of access to health care since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
How did we get here?
Not long ago, health insurance companies could cancel your coverage if you got sick and cap the amount of care you could receive each year, placing a huge financial burden on Minnesotans getting treatment for serious illnesses and diseases like cancer. In fact, bankruptcies due to medical debt increased by nearly 50 percent in a six-year period, from 46 percent in 2001 to 62 percent in 2007.
In response, federal lawmakers enacted new protections for consumers and tax credits for individuals, families and businesses to purchase coverage at a more affordable price. Although I might have preferred a different approach, these policies are proving a big success at the national level and here in Minnesota. We are coming closer to accepting access to health care as a basic human right.
MNsure, our state’s online health insurance marketplace, allows Minnesotans to compare private sector health plans and find out if they qualify for tax credits or public programs like MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance. It’s worth noting that MNsure offers the lowest premiums of any marketplace in the entire country – and that’s before you factor in any tax credits.
To date, over 200,000 Minnesotans have enrolled in high-quality, affordable coverage through MNsure, far exceeding the original goal of 135,000 people.
Regardless of whether you receive health insurance through MNsure or your employer, your coverage cannot be taken away when you get sick and it cannot be capped within a year or your lifetime. Young adults can stay on their parents’ plan until age 26. And Minnesotans can receive preventative care at no charge.
Those kinds of commonsense steps are giving Minnesota families more security and peace of mind. However, some people continue to throw stones from the sideline and spread misinformation to undermine the success we are seeing.
It’s no secret that MNsure got off to a rough start due to some technical problems with their website, but those issues were promptly addressed. Instead of looking back and focusing on those IT problems, it is my hope that Minnesotans will look forward and continue working together in a cooperative, constructive manner to build on MNsure’s success and strengthen our state’s nation-leading health care system.
Doing so will give more Minnesotans the security they deserve. A recent trip to my local auto repair shop underscored for me the positive impact MNsure is having on people’s lives.
As I was writing the check to pay for some repairs, the manager of this small business told me he had been diagnosed with cancer and didn’t know how he would pay for the life-saving treatment he needed. His local insurance agent encouraged him to look into MNsure and he did. “Everything is taken care of and I am getting better. I am hoping I can beat this thing, I would not have made it without that help.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson called Abraham Lincoln our “first middle class President.” Lincoln believed in “government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people.” It is a belief that government should provide for the people those things which they cannot provide for themselves. Without taking care of the people we lose the ability for our society to sustain the possibility of a middle class and without a middle class we will lose our democracy. I stand with Abe.