Health Care Minnesota: The Two Issues at the Top

In reality, the U.S. guarantees health care for all residing in this country; it just doesn’t guarantee who is going to pay for it.

Health care is certainly a top agenda item around the nation and around the state. With the Minnesota legislature now firmly in DFL controlled hands, health care initiatives that were once thought near impossible seem suddenly to be close to inevitable. Here are two issues to watch:

more insideA complete smoking ban in all public places, including restaurants and most, if not all, bars. The bill has already been introduced, and Gov. Pawlenty has said that if passed he would sign it. An up-to-date list of all states and municipalities with smoking bans is here.

Guaranteed health care for all Minnesota children. After being an ogre on the health care issue in his previous administration, the Governor has appeared to reverse himself by calling for state-supported health care for all Minnesotans up to the age of 18. Granted, in previous budget cycles the state was staring at a deficit rather than the projected surplus today.

But once his plan was rolled out, it appeared to have less substance than what the legislature wanted. As always, what politicians say and what they do are two different things. Hopefully, the Governor and the legislature will come together for a workable plan.

Meanwhile, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, advocates for a single-payer health care system rallied in St. Paul. “Single-payer” and “universal” health care are catch terms but hardly mean the same thing. In reality, the U.S. guarantees health care for all residing in this country; it just doesn’t guarantee who is going to pay for it.

Right now, all agree that the system is broken. The problem is so complex, however, that proposed solutions are more based on political philosophy than on good accounting principles like best outcomes for the cost inputs.

Minnesota Monitor has covered several options in previous articles here.