October 17-19, 2016
Oct 17 08:19 Thissen's lies on insurance hikes Oct 17 09:54 Rep. Nolan thinks you're stupid Oct 18 01:11 SD-14 health care debate notes Oct 18 09:25 DFL's Dorholt propaganda Oct 18 13:09 Wolgamott: typical DFL empty suit Oct 18 20:08 SCSU's pro-Muslim bias? Oct 18 22:54 Mills vs. Nolan, Obamacare Oct 19 12:37 Thissen's MNsure exaggeration Oct 19 14:47 Gov. Dayton's MNsure fantasies
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Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Thissen's lies on insurance hikes
I can't believe I missed this statement from Rep. Paul Thissen about the massive health insurance premium increases caused by Obamacare. Better late than never, though, right?
Rep. Thissen opens his statement saying "Minnesotans deserve quality health care at an affordable price. These rate increases for Minnesotans buying coverage in the individual market are too high. It's not fair to families. Republicans will inevitably point fingers and blame MNsure. But that won't solve the problem. Indeed, many people buying through MNsure will see much lower, if any, premium increases because they will be able to receive tax credits."
First, this statement was dated Sept. 30, 2016. That's thirteen days before Gov. Dayton said that "Affordable Care Act isn't affordable" for many Minnesotans anymore. Since Gov. Dayton's statement, it's likely that every legislator has heard horror stories from their constituents. Thissen's statement also was published before Bill Clinton said that Obamacare was "the craziest thing" he'd ever seen.
Thissen's tone changed dramatically when he published this statement on Oct. 14:
Rep. Thissen is lying when he talked about "insurance companies who are putting profits before patients." This isn't a misstatement. It isn't a simple mistake. It's an outright lie because Rep. Thissen's known for quite some time that insurance companies were leaving MNsure because they were losing tens of millions of dollars. Further, Rep. Thissen knows that the Dayton administration had to approve massive premium increases and caps on how many people the insurance companies were required to enroll just to keep them from pulling out of MNsure entirely because they were losing money.
Thissen's proposal isn't a solution, either. It's a temporary fix at best. Rep. Thissen can't admit what will happen next year because it's that grim. There's no guarantee that these insurance companies won't jump ship next year. In fact, I'd bet that they will abandon this sinking ship.
Posted Monday, October 17, 2016 8:19 AM
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Rep. Nolan thinks you're stupid
Rep. Rick Nolan, (DFL-MN), thinks Second Amendment activists are stupid. He thinks voters are stupid, too. His quote in this DNT article highlights just what he thinks of voters.
When asked about his support for Nancy Pelosi's No-Fly-No-Buy legislation, Rep. Nolan said "Why give someone who has sworn allegiance to kill Americans access to guns and ammunition, whereas you wouldn't with some guy found guilty of writing bad checks?" The problem with Rep. Nolan's statement is that a significant number of people on that list are honest, law-abiding citizens. Reporters like the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes was put on the list because he bought a one-way plane ticket to Greece. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy was on that watch list, too.
Rep. Nolan's grandstanding notwithstanding, why would we trust Rep. Nolan to do the right thing when it comes to protecting Americans' civil rights? It's one thing to deny terrorists guns. It's quite another to deny reporters the right to protect their families because an idiot bureaucrat unilaterally puts a law-abiding citizen on a terrorist watch list.
Rep. Jason Metsa, who represents HD-6B in the Minnesota legislature, tried providing Nolan with some political cover.
"Just to blanket him and say Rick Nolan wants to take your guns away is ludicrous," Metsa said. "I know what he feels about guns; we've talked in-depth. There's no one you would rather have in the hunting shack with you or in the duck blind than Rick Nolan. He's passionate about the outdoors."
Either Rep. Metsa isn't honest or he's ignorant about what the Second Amendment is about. Perhaps it's a little of both. Saying that Nolan is "passionate about the outdoors" is irrelevant in determining whether Rep. Nolan will protect law-abiding people's right to protect their families.
Rick Nolan is a professional politician. He isn't interested in protecting our civil rights. That's why he should be rejected by voters in Minnesota's Eighth District next month.
Posted Monday, October 17, 2016 9:54 AM
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SD-14 health care debate notes
Monday afternoon, Kirsti Marohn of the St. Cloud Times moderated a debate between the candidates for the candidates for the SD-14 Senate candidates and the candidates for HD-14A and HD-14B. It was the best job of moderating a debate I've seen other than the job the Fox News team of Bret Baier, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly.
Prior to the event, Ms. Marohn took to Twitter to ask for questions for the debate. I submitted a question, asking "What is the solution to the Obamacare/MNsure crisis? What needs to be done to prevent more insurers dropping out of the individual market?" It was the next-to-the-last question asked. Suffice it to say that it provoked the sharpest answers of the debate.
Dan Wolgamott, the DFL-endorsed candidate for SD-14, said "Let's take a look at who actually raises the premiums and that's the insurance companies and why is that? Well, it's because the long-term costs of health care are prescription drugs, an aging population and high cost services such as the emergency room. So those are the real long-term costs but we've got to take immediate action to help these families who are in these situations. So we need to provide immediate relief through more tax subsidies to expanding eligibility for those so we can offset the rising costs of those premiums."
That isn't a solution. It's barely a patch for a single year. The reality is that insurance companies are losing tens of millions of dollars nationally. If they can't make money selling their product, they'll quit selling their policies on the individual market. It's that simple.
Zach Dorholt's answer was even more extreme:
We have to remember that when we chose to opt into MNsure, we received Medicaid expansion dollars and those directly impacted the people I work with as a counselor. I work with people who live with serious and persistent mental illness, many of whom were kicked off of a program called General Assistance Medical Care by then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty and many of those people ended up on the street. Many of those folks ended up costing the system more and that change cost some of those people their lives. If we're going to be serious about addressing the flaw of the ACA, which is that it didn't have a public option, and that is very frustrating. We can do that here in Minnesota. There's three things that we can do: 1. We could pass the Minnesota Health Plan, which would be universal single-payer health care for all Minnesotans. 2. We could create our own public option, which is allowing people to buy into MinnesotaCare and 3, which I think we have to do Day One to address the rising costs of private insurance companies raised, not MNsure. Yes, MNsure is a system that has its flaws and MNsure didn't raise rates. Private insurance companies raised rates and we need to do something Day One that gives rebates to those people who are stuck in the middle with these high costs.In other words, Dorholt is for a single-payer health care system. That would ruin the US health care system virtually instantly because the government would set prices. That sounds good until you realize that doctors, clinics and hospitals won't work without just compensation. Once that's implemented, doctor and nurse shortages will appear virtually instantly.
Jerry Relph, the GOP-endorsed candidate for the State Senate, cut to the heart of the matter:
I think there's something that needs to be pointed out here and that is that the reasons why premiums are going up is very simple. The people that were expected to sign up for these programs are not signing up for them. As a result, the people that are drawing on the resource using the insurance are causing the insurance companies to pay out more for medical care and the insurance companies are not receiving the compensation from the healthy people that will offset that cost so we need to look at that.That's how the Obamacare death spiral starts. Even though a significant portion of young people are eligible for IRS subsidies or are forced to pay a fine, they still aren't buying health insurance. That means most of the people who've bought health care through the individual market are the patients that have the highest use of medical services.
Jim Knoblach summed things up best:
Well, MNsure is a disaster. We probably had what was the best health insurance system in the United States 4-5 years ago here in Minnesota. Only about 8% of the people in the state didn't have health insurance. The vast majority of those actually qualified for public health care plans like MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance. It wasn't because of MNsure. They were eligible for all those things anyway. But then with the passage of MNsure at the state level and everything that went with it, it really wrecked the system we had. That's one of the big differences between my opponent and I. Zach voted for this and I never would've voted for this.It's clear that the DFL candidates aren't willing to agree with Gov. Dayton and President Clinton. It's clear, too, that Republicans have a strong grasp of the issue and that they have solutions to fix this crisis.
Originally posted Tuesday, October 18, 2016, revised 19-Oct 5:20 PM
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DFL's Dorholt propaganda
Warren Bradbury's LTE highlights the fact that the DFL thinks voters are stupid. Bradbury said that "There was no stalemate on funding vital transportation programs." That's technically true because the DFL legislature totally ignored transportation issues when they controlled the legislature.
The DFL ignored transportation issues because they were too busy passing a bill to build a $90,000,000 office building for fat-cat politicians. The DFL ignored transportation issues because they were too busy imposing tax increases on farmers and businesses with warehouse operations. The DFL ignored transportation issues because they were too busy shoving unionization down the throats of in-home child care providers.
Then-Rep. Dorholt voted for each of those things in his first year. In his second year, after getting blistered by his constituents for his votes on raising taxes, he voted to repeal the tax increases he voted for in his first year.
This LTE says "As state representative from 2013-2014, Zachary Dorholt balanced the budget, got all our district bonding bills passed and reduced local school tax burdens through increasing state funding." Actually, then-Rep. Dorholt didn't reduce "local school tax burdens." I know because I wrote this post to highlight how Dorholt failed to lower property taxes:
St. Cloud school district has imposed its largest tax levy increase in six years for 2015. The district's property-tax levy will increase by $3.3 million, or 14.75 percent , to nearly $26 million. The school board voted unanimously Thursday night to approve the 2015 levy. District officials say the increase is needed to pay for a spate of improvements to facilities.
This LTE is dishonest, too:
Zach has worked diligently for the people of this legislative district, and, with your help, we can return him to finish this good work, and continue to move our state forward.
This is what that paragraph looks like if written truthfully:
Zach has worked diligently for the union special interests. He ignored in-home child care providers who opposed forced unionization, instead siding with the unions that contribute thousands of dollars to his campaigns.
The forced unionization bill passed on a straight party-line vote, with Dorholt voting with AFSCME. This past March, in-home child care providers told the DFL that they thoroughly rejected the DFL's forced unionization :
In the end, in-home child care providers rejected AFSCME's forced unionization plan. In fact, the vote wasn't that close. According to this article , the 'vote was 1,014-392 in a Tuesday count by the state Bureau of Mediation Services from ballots mailed to providers last month."
The truth is that Dorholt is a special interest magnet. He wouldn't have gotten elected if not for his campaigns being funded and run by the DFL's special interest allies. A quick glance at Dorholt's campaign finance report highlights the fact that Mr. Dorholt is bought and paid for by the unions:
Posted Tuesday, October 18, 2016 9:25 AM
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Wolgamott: typical DFL empty suit
The biggest things I took away about Dan Wolgamott, the DFL-endorsed candidate for SD-14, from yesterday's candidate forum is that he's an empty suit and that he's prone to talking himself in circles. On the subject of transportation, for instance, his opponent, Jerry Relph, said he opposed raising the gas tax as the solution to fixing Minnesota's roads and bridges because it isn't a stable funding source. Relph added that the gas tax might be used as a patchwork to fixing roads and bridges.
When it was Wolgamott's turn, he said that raising the gas tax wasn't his first choice, either, for the same reasons. Wolgamott added that there's no disputing the fact that Minnesota's lagged in investing in transportation. Wolgamott then said that he has the ability to bring people together (one of his go-to lines when he's grasping for what to say next) before finishing by saying that all options have to be on the table, including raising the gas tax. If it doesn't provide a stable funding source, it doesn't have to be kept on the table.
There's no doubt that, if given the time, Wolgamott would talk himself into opposing the gas tax increase again.
On a health care question that I submitted, Wolgamott said that "There's been a lot of boogey-manning going on about MNsure" before saying "we've got to take immediate action to help these families who are in these situations." No kidding, Captain Obvious. Premiums are increasing by 50%-67% and Wolgamott says that "we've got to take immediate action to help these families who are in these situations." Unfortunately, he didn't admit why they're increasing that much.
Perhaps that's because Wolgamott doesn't want to admit that the DFL screwed things up by moving away from the system they had that was working. Perhaps it's because he isn't bright enough to figure that out.
Posted Tuesday, October 18, 2016 1:09 PM
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SCSU's pro-Muslim bias?
Recently, a memo was sent out talking about the need for SCSU to embrace "diversity and encourage the celebration of multicultural traditions." The email says that "two Meditation and Prayer Rooms are available on campus to students, faculty, staff and visitors for reflection, prayer and meditation. The rooms, located in Atwood Memorial Center and the Miller Center, are open to all and cannot be reserved."
While that sounds fine, what LFR has learned is that Semya Hakim, a Human Relations and Multicultural Education professor and adviser to the Muslim Student Association, pushed this initiative. LFR has also learned that SCSU has spent over $11,000 thus far on the prayer and meditation room in Miller Center and that that price will definitely go higher. Prior to Prof. Hakim's intervention, SCSU showed no signs of caring about religious diversity.
Considering Prof. Hakim's background as an adviser to the Muslim Student Association and their ties to CAIR, it isn't exactly a stretch to think that Prof. Hakim wasn't that worried about the civil rights of people of other faiths.
In this article about CAIR, Hakim said that the definition of Islamophobia is the "extremely strong dislike or fear of Islam and the people who practice it." Prof. Hakim then said that Jaylani Hussein's talk would "likely talk about definitions of Islamophobia, incidents that have displayed it and what people can do in response."
SCSU is running another deficit this year, especially since headcount enrollment dropped another 2.4% this semester. The fact that budgets were cut while this project was approved is disturbing. It's disturbing that SCSU put a higher priority on displaying their diversity than they put on getting the University's finances in order. Unfortunately, it isn't surprising.
It's unfortunate that the special interests run SCSU. Until it changes, its struggles will continue.
Posted Tuesday, October 18, 2016 8:08 PM
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Mills vs. Nolan, Obamacare
There's never been any doubt that Stewart Mills didn't like Obamacare. That disapproval comes through vividly in a recent conversation with a small business owner who will be one of Mills' constituents if he's elected.
Before I get into the video's content, it's important that we put into context Mills' opponent, Rick Nolan. Nolan unapologetically favors a government-run single-payer health system. At a recent debate, Nolan "doubled down on the Affordable Care Act, saying he favored movement toward a single-payer universal system." Meanwhile, "Mills punctuated his opposition to Obamacare and preference for privatized health care by saying poignantly enough, 'Just being insured doesn't mean you have access to health care.'"
Mills is on firm footing with that statement. Many of the policies that are getting written have huge premiums and even higher deductibles. Often, families have to spend tens of thousands of dollars of their own money before the insurance company pays out a penny. Even then, the health insurance companies still lose money.
Nolan has consistently portrayed Stewart Mills as a rich fat-cat that's out-of-touch with the Eighth District. Nolan's campaign is best described as all class warfare all the time. There's no substance to Nolan's campaign. This videotaped conversation between Stewart Mills and Butch Karcher of Karcher Foster Services is particularly impacting if you have an open mind:
Anyone that can watch that video with an open mind has to admit that Nolan's characterization of Stewart Mills is an outright lie. Not only isn't Stewart Mills not out of touch with the average person. Mills is actually an expert on health care. Meanwhile, Nolan is just a mean-spirited, dishonest ideologue on the subject. Watching the entire videotaped interview is instructive, especially if compared with the intellectually wimpy stuff Nolan puts in his videos.
Posted Tuesday, October 18, 2016 10:54 PM
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Thissen's MNsure exaggeration
It's a certainty that Paul Thissen will either lie outright or, at minimum, exaggerate when talking about MNsure. Thissen's op-ed in the Winona newspaper contains such an exaggeration.
In Thissen's op-ed, the leader of the DFL in the House said "One of the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act forbids insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. This has helped dramatically reduce the number of uninsured Minnesotans, which means fewer uninsured Minnesotans are receiving care in emergency rooms - the most expensive form of health care (which is paid for by all of us)."
Actually, the ACA didn't help "dramatically reduce the number of uninsured Minnesotans" because Minnesota already had a great system for insuring people with PECs. It was called MCHA, aka the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association. MCHA was eliminated when MNsure was created. MCHA was a high-risk pool that took in people who had applied for health insurance but were rejected because they had a pre-existing condition. It was a guaranteed issue plan.
As a result of MCHA, Minnesota's uninsured rate in 2007 was 7.2%. In 2012, Minnesota's uninsured rate had dropped to 5%. It's impossible to honestly say that the ACA helped "dramatically reduce the number of uninsured Minnesotans" when the number of Minnesotans who were uninsured was microscopic. If Rep. Thissen had been honest, he would've said it marginally helped "reduce the number of uninsured Minnesotans" but that isn't how Rep. Thissen operates. It's all exaggeration all the time with Rep. Thissen.
Here's something else that Rep. Thissen said that's false:
But a consequence has been more high-cost patients in the individual market, many more than insurers anticipated. Additionally, the cost of health care continues to rise. The escalating price of prescription drugs and other procedures is driving up the cost of health care for everyone, whether they are on the individual market or receiving insurance through their employer.
That isn't true. Republicans predicted this exact scenario. They predicted that young people wouldn't sign up for health insurance because it was too expensive. Republicans predicted that the people who signed up were people who had the biggest health issues. They were right.
Rep. Thissen is right that "prescription drugs and other procedures is driving up the cost of health care for everyone" but that was true prior to the ACA. The premium spikes in the individual market are directly attributable to the ratio of people who use health insurance a lot and the people who don't use it often.
Obama, Gov. Dayton and the DFL needed lots of young healthy people to buy insurance. They didn't. They were threatened with fines and the young people said 'no thanks.' The DFL tried enticing them with subsidies. Young people still said no thanks. A product must be terrible when people won't buy it even when the government holds a gun to their heads. This paragraph is especially infuriating:
Second, we must stabilize the individual market. Scrapping MNsure entirely, as Republicans have favored, would not solve the underlying instability of the individual market. Rather, we should consider Minnesota-driven solutions. For example, to reduce costs we could spread the cost of the sickest Minnesotans across a larger group of Minnesotans through a reinsurance fund. We could also improve competition and choice by allowing Minnesotans to purchase insurance directly through MinnesotaCare regardless of income. It would be naive to say this is an easy problem to solve. We should work together as Democrats and Republicans to solve it.
At the time that MNsure was created, Republicans tried getting the DFL to not eliminate MCHA. The DFL didn't listen. Now that there's a crisis that threatens the DFL's stranglehold on St. Paul, Rep. Thissen is praising the reinsurance plan.
Democrats will always do the right thing -- when it's the only option left. Even so, lots of DFL legislators, including Zach Dorholt and John Marty, are pushing single-payer health insurance. Simply put, the DFL can't be trusted to do the right thing with health insurance.
Posted Wednesday, October 19, 2016 12:37 PM
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Gov. Dayton's MNsure fantasies
Last week, Gov. Dayton said that the ACA was unaffordable. This week, in Gov. Dayton's Strib op-ed , he's insisting that things really aren't that bad, saying most people "will NOT see actual health insurance increases of 50 percent or more, because many people, who buy their policies through MNsure, will receive federal tax credits that will significantly lower their costs."
Gov. Dayton, if these subsidies "significantly lower" health insurance premium costs, why did you insist that the "Affordable Care Act isn't affordable" anymore? We know you said that because it's captured in this video:
Gov. Dayton's most stunning admission in his op-ed is when he said "And while it is true that the Minnesota Department of Commerce finally 'approved' the health insurers' rate increases and enrollment caps, that approval was required to prevent those companies from following Minnesota Blue Cross Blue Shield and major insurers in other states from pulling entirely out of the individual market. Their departures are forcing about 2 million people in 32 other states to also find new coverage."
That's admitting that the major insurance companies will pull out of the individual markets if they aren't granted major premium increases each year ! It's worth noting that Sen. Rubio forced this by getting a bill passed that ended insurance company bailouts. Think about that. President Obama knew that his signature achievement would bankrupt insurance companies if it didn't have a bailout provision in it.
Compare that with Minnesota prior to Obamacare/MNsure. Minnesota virtually eliminated the uninsured by establishing a high-risk pool in 1976. Thanks to that system, Minnesota's uninsured rate was a paltry 7.2% in 2007. Last week, I wrote this post , noting that the national uninsured rate was 15.5%.
Gov. Dayton and the DFL enthusiastically passed MNsure when the DFL controlled the legislature and Dayton was the DFL governor. In his op-ed, Gov. Dayton insists he needs an all-DFL legislature:
I ask you to vote for two years with DFL majorities in both the Minnesota House and Senate, in order to fulfill my pledge to you: A Better Minnesota.
Minnesotans, the last time we had a DFL governor and DFL majorities in the House and Senate, we got a Senate Office Building for fat-cat politicians and skyrocketing health insurance premiums. Exploding health insurance premiums and a $90,000,000 building for fat-cat politicians isn't taking us in the right direction. I'm betting people think that that's taking Minnesota in the wrong direction.
Finally, Gov. Dayton, if things aren't that bad, why are you, Rep. Thissen and Commissioner Rothman calling this a crisis?
Originally posted Wednesday, October 19, 2016, revised 21-Oct 9:41 AM
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