As hungry hounds get ready to rip apart Obamacare, all Americans should start looking to Minnesota for answers on how to replace it.
In 1992, Republican Gov. Arne Carlson and bipartisan legislators created what’s called MinnesotaCare, a state-operated health-insurance program. Thanks to that program, close to 110,000 Minnesotans now have affordable health coverage, based on income levels. And, as Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton recently noted, the program runs with less than 3 percent in annual overhead costs, which is vastly more efficient than other kinds of plans.
Dayton and DFL’ers Sen. Tony Lourey and Rep. Clark Johnson recently wrote a column recommending all Minnesotans should be allowed to buy health insurance through MinnesotaCare. Their premiums would cover the full costs of their policies so there would be no need for state subsidies, say Dayton and the two legislators.
They call it the MinnesotaCare Buy-in Option. On the national scene, leaders like Bernie Sanders have long called for a similar national plan called the Medicare Buy-in Option. What these options would amount to, more or less, is a one-payer health-care system, although people could still buy their own insurance plans in the marketplace – those who could afford it, that is.
All other civilized countries on this planet have one-payer, universal-coverage health systems, and contrary to long-entrenched propaganda, their health-care outcomes are not substandard, not train-wrecks, not dealers of death. In fact, they rate highly year after year, according to studies by the World Health Organization and other watchdog agencies.
To be sure, Obamacare has its problems, as does health-care insurance in general (in many cases, escalating premiums and/or high deductibles). Those could be remedied if all factions would come together to improve it. But those who have hated it lock, stock, barrel since its inception are committed to killing it off – never mind 20 million Americans are covered because of it. And never mind the historic firsts it introduced, such as no denial because of pre-existing conditions, to name just one.
It’s always mordantly amusing when pollsters ask people if they approve of the Affordable Care Act, and many answer “Yes.” When those same people are asked if they approve of Obamacare, they answer an outraged “No!” In fact, they are different names for the same thing. And those knee-jerk responses are proof positive those who most disfavor Obamacare with a kind of blind hatred have not done their homework; they’ve been listening to the noisy propagandists.
The Republicans are promising to replace the ACA with a system that will be far more affordable, more cost-efficient and one that will cover every American. Well, I for one, say, “Bring it on!” If they can manage that miracle, they’ll get my vote for sure in the next election. Even former President Barack Obama said such a Republican-devised system, if it delivers such sunshine promises, would be worthy of universal support.
However, let’s not count chickens before they hatch, especially not when the chickens are now in the embryonic stages of health-savings accounts and increased market competition, both notoriously ineffective when it comes to the health-care industry, although of course competition is part of the solution. There is intense competition, for example, in a one-payer system.
The following is an excerpt from the Dayton-Lourey-Johnson column:
“Republicans, Democrats and all Minnesotans agree we need more affordable health insurance. We also agree there needs to be more competition to give consumers better choices while purchasing the coverage they need at prices they can afford . . . We ought to take our lesson from a program – MinnesotaCare – that has worked successfully for decades, and now give more Minnesotans the choice to purchase this high-quality insurance at lower prices.”
One of the Republican replacement ideas is to let states come up with their own solutions. Trouble is, states have been doing that forever – states like Mississippi and Texas where so many residents have no health insurance at all (coverage they cannot afford) and where some people are literally dying because they could not get preventive services that might have saved them.
This is America; we are all Americans; and we should demand all Americans have affordable access to health care across the board, in all 50 states, not just some. Minnesota has long been a leader for that goal, and that is why these Obamacare-replacement planners should start paying closer attention to how health care is handled here in the “Star of the North.”
