Health Care Reform

 

Minnesota has long been a leader in health care innovation and our employee insurance coverage ranks near the top in the United States. As a chamber of commerce, we represent large and small businesses. Our members want changes and improvements in the cost and delivery of health care coverage.

We acknowledge the facts, our health care system is not sustainable, and by 2018, spending on health care will comprise 20% of the GDP. Employers cannot continue to absorb these increased costs.

That being said, a wholesale shift to a government run plan would increase costs to employers, stifle innovation and shift service delivery to a politically based bureaucracy, with the federal government administering the plan, determining benefits premiums, and payments to providers. A change this immense will also derail the need to address the root of the problem, rising costs, and improvement of quality in the health care system.

We strongly urge policy makers to proceed with great caution when considering health care reforms. Reform proposals envision a system that will allow all individuals to purchase health care coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, employment status, and provide for low and moderate income subsidies. We must consider a common sense approach that builds on the private insurance market, and system free to innovate, respond quickly to patients’ needs or implement changes to the system that improve quality and reduce costs. We believe that a system predicated on the strengths of the current system will be a more effective path to universal health care coverage.

 

NEWS

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Minnesotans can now compare the costs and quality of health care providers on a single website under a initiative unveiled Wednesday, August 26, by Governor Tim Pawlenty and other health interests involved in the project. Minnesota is the first state to launch a "one-stop comparison shopping web site" that lists the average price paid by health insurance plans for 100 of the most common medical procedures, Pawlenty said a Capitol news conference. "If we're going to move towards comsumer empowerment in health care reform and more consumer choice in the health care delivery system, we have to give consumers and purchasers better information. This web site will do that, he said.

The new state web site - www.mnhealthscores.org - allows consumers to compare the average price health insurance plans pay for 100 of the most commom medical procedures.

Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press, 8/26/09 www.twincities.com "State site has data on health care costs"

 

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