Gov. Mark Dayton is scheduled to sign an early Medicaid expansion for Minnesota on Wednesday, and the tea party is planning to be there to protest. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty refused to sign the state up for the early Medicaid opt-in, in which all states will have to enroll by 2014 as part of health care reform. An email from the Tea Party Patriots of Minnesota says they hope to have 100 protesters at the Capitol rotunda.

Under the early Medicaid expansion, single childless adults earning less than $675 a month will be shifted off of General Assistance Medical Care, which was gutted during the budget battle in 2009 and partially reinstated in 2010, to federal Medicaid.

Pawlenty opposed the funding because it would cost the state matching funds to implement the expansion. Dayton originally has set Tuesday as the date to sign the executive order enrolling the state in the Medicaid program, but changed it to Wednesday which the tea party sarcastically took credit for.

Here’s the email sent out jointly between the tea party and Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, a tea party affiliated group:

You Scared the Governor!!!!!!

He Changed the Date & Location!!!

Note the Change of Date & Location

ObamaCare Protest

DATE: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5
PLACE: GOVERNOR’S RECEPTION ROOM, Office of the Governor
DATE: 9:30 a.m. (please arrive by 9:00 a.m. to receive CCHF talking points/stickers)
Room: 130 State Capitol (first floor)
Address: 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, St. Paul, MN 55155

RSVP Requested – email Jenna (jenna@cchfreedom.org)

PLEASE COME:
One legislator I was speaking with hopes there will be 100 protestors in the Rotunda. Dayton is planning to be surrounded by supporters. Your presence will tell a different story. NOTE: if anyone from the media approaches you, please talk in a very respectable manner. We’ll distribute talking points for your use.

Let us know if you’ll be coming.
Email Jenna Minegar with your name, approx. number of people coming and phone number (in case the location changes): jenna@cchfreedom.org

ADDRESS – 75 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, St. Paul, MN 55155
PARKING – Bring lots of quarters to park on the street or in parking lots near the State Capitol.

See you there!

Rep. Patti Fritz, DFL-Faribault, introduced the amendment to ban taxpayer funding for abortions under GAMC.

“The GAMC program already does pay for and has paid for 60 abortions recently,” Fritz said Thursday.

But that’s incorrect, said Rep. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul. “I want to be crystal clear. GAMC does not cover pregnant women.” she said. “In our legislation one of the categories of eligibility that we are being very clear about: pregnant women go to Medical Assistance.”

Murphy noted that the reason Minnesota’s Catholic bishops had put their support behind the GAMC bill was because abortions aren’t part of the program.

Who is correct? According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, women who become pregnant while on GAMC are automatically transferred to the state’s Medical Assistance program. They don’t even need to fill out an application.

But, MCCL blurred the lines in their press release about the vote, conflating the two programs.

Taxpayers have been forced to fund abortion procedures done under both GAMC and Medical Assistance (MA), the Minnesota Medicaid program. In 1993, taxpayers paid about $7,000 for 23 abortions performed in cases of rape, incest, or where the life of the mother was in danger. In 2007, taxpayers funded 3,914 abortions at a cost of $1.58 million, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services; the total since 1994 is 47,115 abortions and $14.1 million.

“Taxpayer funded abortions—forcing citizens to pay for the killing of unborn children—is an issue that rises above partisan and ideological politics,” Fischbach added. “Minnesotans must not be forced to pay abortionists for their destruction of innocent human life.”

The measure failed on a tied vote of 67-67.

Over the weekend, reproductive rights group hailed the defeat of the amendment.

“Anti-choice forces attempted to add an anti-choice amendment to the GAMC bill which that funds our state’s health program for low-income people,” Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. “Thankfully, this amendment was defeated in a tie vote of 67-67.”

And NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota sent a similar alert to members. “On Thursday the anti-choice forces introduced an egregious anti-choice amendment to the bill that funds our state’s health program for low-income people,” said the group’s director Linnea House. “That’s right; it was a Stupak/Pitts-type amendment to a program that doesn’t even cover abortion. Fortunately, the amendment was defeated by a tied vote and the bill went on to approval 125 to 9.”

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

BLOOMINGTON: This is what democracy looks like! Twenty gubernatorial candidates, sitting behind two very long tables. [Southwest Newspapers via Minnesota News Council]

LAKE SUPERIOR: This is what improper regulatory protection looks like. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), the fish-killing viral invader, finally makes it to Gitchee Gumee. (Duluth News Tribune)

STATE CAPITOL: “The most to gain and the most to lose.” That’s what Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s got, as candidate for governor and state House Speaker. [Politics in Minnesota]

ST. PAUL: GAMC will survive one month longer. Now the state medical care program for the poor will die April 1. [Associated Press]

DELLWOOD: The Elephant Who Protected the Donkey. State auditor candidate Pat Anderson already let go of her own campaign for governor — but now she is helping DFLer R.T. Rybak’s. [Polinaut]

RAMSEY: City of 23,000 could get veterans hospital and train station. And a pony. [Star Tribune]

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATE CAPITOL: High eleven-o’clock for finance forecast. Whether the state’s economic hole when announced this morning is big or small, more of Gov. Pawlenty’s unallotment cuts could follow. [Politics in Minnesota]

STATE CAPITOL: Better than Joe Mauer. Pawlenty is nine for 13 on budget forecasts showing deficits since he’s been in office. [Associated Press]

STATEWIDE: Vets in U.S. House react to Obama’s Afghan speech. Tim Walz looks forward to “a much smaller footprint.” [Star Tribune]

STATEWIDE: Budget cuts mean ex-cons won’t get meds. Fresh out of prison, they may find themselves fresh out of medication, unless they can come up with co-pays. [Minnesota Public Radio]

TWIN CITIES: But not for little chicks? Fortune magazine says the Twin Cities provides the world’s best incubator for business leaders. [MinnPost]

SCOTT COUNTY: Faux farm? Forget it. Locals face tax crackdown on land they’re not really tilling. [Star Tribune]

A crowd of nurses who visited the governor’s office yesterday could have helped him craft his blog post.

But not with the politics part: Pawlenty knows his way around the the subtle exploitation of the italics function on his computer keyboard. He used it to great effect, and only once, in his post, giving emphasis to another jab at his leading rival for the GOP presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and that state’s health plan. It was in the lead-in to the excerpt quoted above:

Otherwise costs will continue to grow in an unsustainable way, and, as we’ve seen in other states, government mandates will only shift the burden of exploding costs onto the shoulders of taxpayers and ordinary Americans unable to cover them.

No, instead the nurses gathered in his anteroom could have reminded Pawlenty that local hospitals and taxpayers will be left to pick up higher emergency-room tabs for health care to the indigent after his cuts to the regular care provided under GAMC take effect.

But, as is so often the case these days, the governor wasn’t in.

Elsewhere in Minnesota headlines this morning …

ST. CLOUD: Michele Bachmann bans press, makes quick cameo at own public forum. People who can’t take her for more than 10 minutes didn’t have to. [St. Cloud Times]

MINNEAPOLIS: Memo to self: Try that chokehold again. Coleen Rowley revisits a local angle on the U.S. government torture program, in light of the latest revelations. [MN Progressive Project]

ST. PAUL: Tony Sutton’s long ascent to become MNGOP chair. His cure for the “Obama hiccup”? Slam another Diet Coke. [City Pages]

MINNEAPOLIS: City council could go to court to block referendum from ballot. The park board’s bid for independent taxing authority might burn out like a 2004 medical-marijuana reeferendum. [Star Tribune]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Budweiser can’t do the can, says “U.” The King of Beers’ gold-and-maroon cans go the way of Victoria’s Secret U of M–themed togs. [Star Tribune]

AVON: Bones of prehistoric woman dug up at construction site. Since it’s going to be a credit union, she’ll be reburied with no added fees. [St. Cloud Times]

Ominous news about job losses and financial woes at Minnesota hospitals over the last week coincide with Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s line-item veto of $381 million in General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) grants and his vow to make even more cuts by unallotment. But as bad as the doomsday scenarios are, they shouldn’t include St. Paul’s Regions Hospital closing — a prospect that the DFL warned of over the weekend.

Here are some headlines from the last week that, to some at least, read like plot lines for a series-ending episode of TV’s “House” doctor drama, if not a medical prequel to the post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” movies.

» Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis will lay off 100 staffers.

» Park Nicollet Health Services lays off 240 and closes a clinic in Hopkins. The owner of Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park has already laid off more than twice that number over the last six months.

» Willmar’s Rice Memorial Hospital continues to shed staff. Layoffs have left the city-owned hospital with its smallest workforce in a decade.

» In rural areas of the state, doctors are scarce. Health care organizations must dangle bonuses to attract debt-laden med school grads to the hinterlands.

» St. Peter bucked the trend by expanding a local clinic of Mayo Health System, but Mayo’s flagship facility in Rochester will lose $30 million from Pawlenty’s GAMC veto alone.

» Losing patients, North Memorial Health Care is cutting 100 jobs. A 6-percent decline in stays at the Robbinsdale hospital hides one area in which business is up by 22 percent: charity care.

» Two metro hospitals that care for the poor — Regions in St. Paul and HCMC in Minneapolis — will make deep cuts. HCMC Medical Director Michael Belzer says revisiting state cuts during the 2010 Legislative session will be too late, as hospitals will have set budgets and take actions necessary to meet them by then.

But Regions is not in danger of closing its doors, contrary to a DFL Party announcement (see below) from the closing days of the legislative session.

“That’s not going to happen,” Regions spokesman Vince Rivard told the Minnesota Independent on Monday, adding that a hospital expansion financed with St. Paul municipal bonds is still set to open this summer.

Still a variety of program cuts at Regions and even imposition of new, restrictive geographical boundaries are possible, Rivard said. The hospital sees patients from as far away as Montana but is only obligated to provide Ramsey County residents with non-emergency services.

And Rivard agreed with HCMC’s Belzer that fixes the Legislature next year makes to the governor’s vetos would come too late to forestall drastic cutbacks.

Here’s the press release from the DFL House DFL Caucus that asserted that Regions Hospital could close. It was sent out Saturday, midway between Pawlenty’s Thursday night line-item veto of GAMC and the end of the Legislative session Monday night.

NEWS STATEMENT
Minnesota House of Representatives

May 16, 2009

PAWLENTY VETO MAY RESULT IN FULL OR PARTIAL CLOSURE OF REGIONS HOSPITAL

Local lawmakers speak out against Governor Pawlenty’s deep cuts to
Regions Hospital

After announcing Thursday he plans to make billions of dollars in
budget cuts alone without public or legislative input, Governor Tim
Pawlenty eliminated General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) in Minnesota.
With one line item veto late Thursday night, the governor cut $381
million that was dedicated exclusively to treat the poorest people in
the state – including veterans, senior citizens, and the mentally ill.

Those cuts may result in the full or partial closure of Regions
Hospital in St. Paul. By eliminating GAMC, the hospital will face a $46
million budget cut – 10% of its gross revenue. Regions Hospital employs
roughly 5,000 people and serves nearly 23,000 patients every year.

The following is a statement from local state lawmakers deeply
concerned about these devastating cuts to Regions Hospital and the
potential impact on residents of St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs:

“Governor Pawlenty’s veto pen single-handedly put Regions Hospital in
St. Paul at serious risk of significantly cutting back critical services
or potentially closing its doors. This is a devastating blow to tens of
thousands of citizens in St. Paul and the surrounding communities who
rely on Regions Hospital for quality, expert medical care. It has
threatened thousands of jobs, and the health and safety of our
communities.

This deep and devastating cut could have been avoided. Lawmakers
offered a responsible alternative that would have cut Regions Hospital
only $5.7 million – a budget reduction the hospital could have sustained
without significantly drawing back critical medical services to our
community.

By eliminating GAMC, Governor Pawlenty has cut 30,000 of Minnesota’s
poorest, sickest citizens off health care. Many are veterans, senior
citizens, people with mentally illness, or those who are homeless. 70%
have expensive mental health or chemical dependency challenges, and 40%
have chronic disease that leads to frequent hospitalization. Without
care, these Minnesotans will be at risk of devastating health
implications.

Finally, these cuts have made the state’s budget shortfall even
worse. Eliminating GAMC in Minnesota costs the state $100 million in
federal matching funds. It also requires that inmates in county jails
and sex offenders who are constitutionally required access to medical
care must now be paid for in general fund dollars.

We are deeply disappointed in Governor Pawlenty’s decision to balance
the budget with jobs and deep cuts to hospitals. In the final days of
session, we’ll keep fighting to protect jobs and keep Minnesota’s
hospitals whole.”

Officials whose names appeared at the top of the release are State Reps. Joe Atkins, John Lesch, Karla Bigham, Leon Lillie, Paul Gardner, Tim Mahoney, Mindy Greiling, Carlos Mariani, Rick Hansen, Erin Murphy, Alice Hausman, Michael Paymar, Sheldon Johnson, Bev Scalze, Kate Knuth and Cy Thao.