St. Paul – 2014 is an important year for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. In Minnesota, all citizens and legal residents are required by law to have health coverage by March 31 of this year or face a fine. Unfortunately, the state agency established to help Minnesotans access coverage plans has been unable to provide the level of service needed. This means thousands across the state are currently without coverage and have been unable to access the state resources they deserve through MNsure.
I’d like to share some important facts with you about the impact of this federal law in our state and our local area:
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MNsure was created after legislation last spring authorized Governor Dayton to construct a state-based exchange to implement Obamacare. The exchange opened for business on October 1, 2013 and was bogged down with significant challenges, such as a privacy breach that put personal information for thousands of insurance brokers in jeopardy.
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The ACA diminishes our state’s power to make health care policies and grants federal agencies more authority over our state-based programs.
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Due to new requirements of the law, 280,000 Minnesotans lost their existing health plans at the end of 2013 or had their plans changed.
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Examples exist of people who have sailed through the MNsure website without a problem, however, the number of overall Minnesotans who have lost coverage is currently much higher than the number who have gained coverage through MNsure.
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Before MNsure, Minnesota’s un-insurance rate was only 8% in 2012, much lower than the national rate of 15%. Minnesota had a nation-leading system of coverage with many options before Governor Dayton committed us fully to the strings of Obamacare.
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A Gross Premium Tax (GPT) is being added to each insurance plan sold on the exchange of up to 3.5%, this will raise premiums and will be used to fund the operations of the exchange.
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Extremely important is the fact that sustainability of our state exchange depends on steady enrollment by Minnesotans, especially young and healthy Minnesotans, into public or private plans through MNsure. To date, enrollment goals have not been met. In fact, officials set low, medium, and high scenarios for how many would enroll, and even the lowest scenario hasn’t been met. Even more concerning is that most of the enrollees have been for existing public programs such as MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance, not private market plans.
Based on the analysis of the information that currently exists regarding lower than budgeted enrollment, enrollment of more sick and less healthy people, long wait times when calling MNSure and poor web technology, it is likely that MNsure officials will come back to taxpayers asking for more funding. So far, MNsure has spent at least $155 million in public dollars on the broken IT system and Paul Bunyan marketing programs. As of this week, those ads have been discontinued to help pay for more customer service agents. Across the country, there is deep concern that the insurance industry will need to be bailed out or risk going under because of all the ACA enrollment problems.
As your state representative, I am deeply concerned with how the lack of leadership at MNsure could impact the health care coverage of families and businesses in our area. At the end of 2013, a top MNsure official resigned and a team of expert consultants was brought in to diagnose the main issues. These consultants released their report this week and it concluded that, even after 3 months of fixes, serious flaws still exist at MNsure, including broken technology which could take up to two years to resolve.
Please know that as we approach the start of the 2014 legislative session, I will be watching the progress of MNsure closely and offering solutions to assist the thousands of Minnesotans impacted by this far-reaching law.
Please feel free to contact my office with other questions or concerns. I can be reached at (651) 296-5377 or rep.bob.barrett@house.mn. I look forward to hearing from you!
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