September 17-21, 2014
Sep 17 12:23 The Dayton-Dorholt-DFL disaster Sep 17 08:09 Dayton: MNsure is competition in action Sep 20 10:57 MNsure is still a disaster Sep 21 10:57 MNsure: the train that keeps wrecking Sep 21 22:56 Mary Burke dogged by plagiarism charges
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
The Dayton-Dorholt-DFL disaster
This morning's startling news that PreferredOne dropped out of MNsure is the latest in a lengthy litany of problems MNsure has dealt with since its rollout. First, there were the mismanagement issues that State Sen. Michelle Benson highlighted. Then there was Jim Nobles' announcement that the Office of Legislative Auditor would audit MNsure . After that, WCCO's Pat Kessler reported that MNsure executives lied to him .
Like I said, it's a lengthy list of problems. Unfortunately for Minnesotans, that lengthy list isn't even close to being a comprehensive list. I could double that list and still not have a comprehensive list of MNsure's problems. It's that big of a disaster.
This afternoon, the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce held a candidate forum. Zach Dorholt put his foot in his mouth when he said "This is a huge change. You can't have change without anxiety."
Rep. Dorholt, these aren't growing pains. They're ongoing problems that can't be fixed in the next couple years. This isn't a bump in the road. They're a Humvee-sized pothole. In fact, they're a Humvee-sized pothole that you voted to create.
Thanks to the misadministration of MNsure, PreferredOne is pulling out of MNsure. Since PreferredOne had the lowest premiums in MNsure, that likely means the price increase in health insurance premiums will likely go up much higher than before PreferredOne's announcement.
Gov. Dayton and the DFL, Rep. Dorholt included, owns this disaster. Every vote for final passage of the bill creating MNsure came from Democrats. Republicans refused to vote for it because they knew it'd be an unmitigated disaster.
The website still isn't working. Health insurance premiums are going up. Provider networks are getting smaller. Things that once took minutes now take months to do. That's what an unmitigated disaster looks like.
Finally, now that one health insurance provider has dropped out of MNsure, it's more likely that another provider will follow PreferredOne's path. PreferredOne essentially said that they can't make money through MNsure. Why wouldn't others follow PreferredOne's lead?
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:23 PM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 18-Sep-14 07:51 AM
Out of curiosity, what would happen if all of them dropped out, or all but one small one, unable to handle the load, dropped out? What is it going to take, other than the fact that it is completely obvious to anybody paying attention, for Dayton to admit this thing is a colossal failure?
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 18-Sep-14 08:09 AM
People would have to buy their insurance through an insurance agent. At that point, people who qualified wouldn't be eligible for a federal subsidy.
Comment 3 by Rex Newman at 18-Sep-14 08:10 PM
Jeff Johnson, call your office. This is a game winner issue. "Mark Dayton can afford MnSure. Can you?"
Dayton: MNsure is competition in action
Mark Dayton's explanation for why PreferredOne is leaving MNsure is stunning:
Gov. Mark Dayton says a key provider's decision to drop out of the state-run health exchange is competition in action.
Gov. Dayton either doesn't understand free market capitalism or he's doing his best to hide the fact that MNsure is a failure. The other possibility is that he's hiding the fact that MNsure is a failure and he doesn't understand free market capitalism.
PreferredOne's decision was based on MNsure's problems :
'PreferredOne Spokesman Steve Peterson tells Hauser this is 'purely a business decision.' He says the company decided continuing to offer insurance through MNsure is 'not administratively and financially sustainable going forward.'
'
'Our MNsure individual product membership is only a small percentage of the entire PreferredOne enrollment but is taking a significant amount of our resources to support administratively,' a company statement says.
Competition didn't drive PreferredOne from the market. MNsure's administrative requirements drove PreferredOne's decision. PreferredOne's decision was also driven by the fact that government regulations made it virtually impossible for them to make a profit. Why would a company volunteer to do tons of work and not get paid for that work?
Dayton says the company gained market share due to its low rates.
PreferredOne dropped out because it's impossible to continue to offer those low rates. That means rates will increase this fall.
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2014 8:09 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 17-Sep-14 08:46 AM
Hey Mark. Preferred one said the website was causing extra work. costing money which they didn't have. Maybe when every buck counts if the website worked the way it was suppose to work they wouldn't have to spend the money.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Rex Newman at 18-Sep-14 07:53 PM
The Governor is correct. This is indeed competition in action. Competitors that cannot make money in a market do indeed drop out. And more the market is burdened (rigged?) with taxes and regulations, the more must drop out. Unless they're subsidized, of course, which I think was the goal all along, make private insurance unworkable to create single payer by default.
Comment 3 by Karen at 20-Sep-14 08:19 AM
The issue is that Democrats DO believe companies should work for little or no profit for the common good. I'm sure if you discussed how the minimum wage issue is affecting Capitol Tavern, which he has an interest in, he would say his employees are much better off and he's all warm and fuzzy about it. In a year or so he will get out of the business.
MNsure is still a disaster
If this article is accurate, then the DFL is flirting with another MNsure disaster. Here's what I'm talking about:
Is your baby married? It's a ridiculous question. But if you just had a baby and went to MNsure to update your family status, the health exchange website may ask you anyway.Agents wouldn't ask this question because they know better. Thanks to the MNsure world of assinine questions and unreliable manual workarounds, parents will get annoyed when they're asked this question. If only that was MNsure's only problem. But I digress. Back to MNsure's failures:
One example: It used to take five minutes to add a baby to a plan under Medical Assistance, Minnesota's version of Medicaid, but now that Medical Assistance runs through MNsure it takes about 45 minutes and "you have to say whether or not a baby is married," said Dakota County director of employment and economic assistance Marti Fischbach, who helps clients sign up for plans.This isn't gossip. It's a quote from someone who works with MNsure on a daily basis. Based on this quote, it sounds like the question gets asked of each parent changing their status. This is understatement:
MNsure Chief Operating Officer Katie Burns on Wednesday admitted there are still major problems with entering life event changes. Much of the work is not automated and data must be entered manually, she told the MNsure board. "It's much more cumbersome right now than ideally it needs to be over the longer term," she said.That's world class spin. In the real world, Ms. Burns would've said that the process sucks. Technorati: MNsure, Medical Assistance, Mark Dayton, Insurance Premiums, Life Events, Scott Leitz, Katie Burns, DFL
Originally posted Saturday, September 20, 2014, revised 16-Oct 3:07 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 20-Sep-14 11:04 AM
I guess they hired the same people who did the federal website. You think they could've found somebody who knew what they were doing.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Mical at 02-Oct-18 01:41 PM
MnSure is a joke. First they lowered their poverty level requirements to get more Minnesotans to pay. Next fact: Medica & UCare both agree and have publicly stated MnSure is a disaster handling the public's health care. MnSure couldn't find it's ass with both hands!
Try calling these clowns once, if you're not on hold for at least 45 mins, you get some incompetent idiot who will undoubtedly transfer you to another person who will then redirect your call. You can get a more straightforward answer from the Marx brothers.
MNsure: the train that keeps wrecking
On a trip to Albert Lea this weekend, GOP Senate candidate Mike McFadden called Obamacare " a train that continues to wreck ":
'The biggest lie of all from the president and Sen. Franken is that this would make health care more affordable,' McFadden said.
With this week's announcement that provider PreferredOne will depart from MNsure, he said costs are only expected to rise even more. He said Preferred One provided 60 percent of the premiums for MNsure. 'This is not the Affordable Care Act,' McFadden said. 'This is the Unaffordable Care Act.'
The DFL will cite people who now have insurance thanks to Obamacare. The reality is that many of those people were eligible for taxpayer-subsidized coverage but didn't sign up for it. In 2012, 93% of Minnesotans were insured. Of those that weren't, over 50% of them were eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. That means 96%-96.5% of Minnesotans were insured or eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.
That's back in the days before MNsure made it infinitely more difficult to apply for insurance. Let's remember, too, that PreferredOne didn't get entirely out of the individual market. They just got out of the individual market that runs through MNsure :
'Our MNsure individual product membership is only a small percentage of the entire PreferredOne enrollment but is taking a significant amount of our resources to support administratively,' a company statement says. 'We feel continuing on MNsure was not sustainable and believe this is an important step to best serve all PreferredOne members.'
In other words, MNsure, aka Obamacare in Minnesota, was so totally messed up that PreferredOne said dealing with MNsure wasn't "administratively and financially sustainable going forward.'
McFadden said he has heard from residents who have seen 50 percent proposed increases in their health insurance premiums for next year and other small business owners who have said they can't afford the increases.
Unfortunately, these people aren't alone. Altogether too many of them are getting hit with higher insurance premiums than they got hit with before Obamacare:
This morning, in an exclusive interview with Examiner.com, Plombon went into detail about what's happening with insurance premiums. What Mr. Plombon said is that some people who get their insurance through the small group market are renewing their policies. Thus far, Advantage 1 has seen these clients' premiums increase from as 'little' as 30% to as much as 106% .
This isn't a hypothetical situation. It's a report from a guy who deals with health insurance for a living.
Mike McFadden is right. Obamacare isn't about affordable care. In Minnesota, it's easily proven as a significant step backwards.
Thanks for voting for Obamacare, Al.
Posted Sunday, September 21, 2014 10:57 AM
Comment 1 by Bob - Vietnam war vet. at 22-Sep-14 03:00 AM
Just like FOX "fake" s-news, this story is devoid of any real proof. It's just your average phony slam against Obama. All you did was quote some vague examples and didn't do what would be called a scientific and honest investigation. It's not really surprising, since the "Koch-created Tea Party" and Republican politicians / news media like FOX and NewsMax (oh, and sickly Lush Limpbaugh, O'Leilly and Fannity are more Plutocrat-sludge mouthpieces), are out to spread more lies about Obama than Micky-D's has Big Macs. Bottom line: LYING has become the major pass time of Far Right-Wingnuts---just like this blog. Ever heard of "trustworthy" or "Honesty is the best policy?" I guess not, given what trash you spew.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 22-Sep-14 08:13 AM
Apparently, Bob isn't a regular reader of this blog. I've written about Heather Carlson's article highlighting how the Minnesota Department of Human Services "failed to send out letters to 16,000 low-income Minnesotans seeking medical assistance to let them know their applications had not been processed and they were not covered." Apparently, Bob thinks everyone who isn't a hardline progressive is a liar because he certainly didn't believe the quote from Ted Plombon about how much premiums are going up. I could go on but that's a waste of time.
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 22-Sep-14 09:24 AM
Gary:
You should go on because if Bob reads it he gets exposed more of the truth though to quote a famous movie character, "The truth! You can't handle the truth!!" is what Bob's reaction is going to be since he can't handle the truth.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Mary Burke dogged by plagiarism charges
There's no question that Scott Walker is in the fight for his political life this cycle. That doesn't mean his campaign's discovery of Mary Burke's policies containing other people's ideas won't hurt Ms. Burke.
In the examples dug up by Walker's campaign staff, Burke has this to say in her rural community report: "While manufacturing employment in general has been declining for years, the production of wind equipment is one of the few potentially large sources of new manufacturing jobs ."
A 2003 report by the Council of State Governments made a similar statement: "At a time when U.S. manufacturing employment is generally on the decline, the production of wind equipment is one of the few potentially large sources of new manufacturing jobs on the horizon."
Predictably, Burke's campaign is attempting to spin this:
Her campaign spokesman, Joe Zepecki, rejected the Republican criticism after reviewing the disputed material. "These baseless allegations reek of desperation," he said by email. "Given more bad jobs numbers... that were released last week, it's no surprise they're desperate; what's surprising is how transparent they're being about it."
First, they aren't allegations. They're verified facts. The comparisons are exceptionally straightforward. Next, saying that this smacks of desperation speaks more to Burke's campaign mindset than it does to Gov. Walker's campaign. I wouldn't be desperate if I'd just found something that shows my opponent is a plagiarist. I'd be quite happy with the discovery. I'd still work hard but I'd be reinvigorated.
Third, there's nothing transparent about the Walker campaign's desperation because it likely doesn't exist. This is the Burke campaign's attempt to downplay the fact that she's looking like a typical liberal without an original thought. Why would people vote for someone who's plans aren't her own?
Burke's veterans plan, "Investing for Jobs and Opportunity: A Plan for Wisconsin's Veterans," has this to say about litigation: "This places additional burdens on those who were injured and in some cases plaintiffs could die before their cases make it through the lengthened court process."
A 2013 column by Darrin Witucki in the Dunn County News carries some of the same language: "The opposition argued that the bill would impose additional burdens on those that were injured - and in some cases plaintiffs could die before their cases made it through the lengthened court process."
Again, where's Mary Burke's thinking? Isn't she capable of putting her plans together? Is she just another cookie cutter progressive who takes orders from her special interest puppeteers?
At this point, it's legitimate to question whether Ms. Burke is just another pleasant-sounding woman who isn't ready for primetime. It's legitimate to ask whether she'd be a leader or whether she's just the public face to the Democrats' special interests. At this point, it isn't wrong to think she's just the face behind the Democrats' push to defeat Gov. Walker.
Based on this video, Ms. Burke apparently has farmed out her policies to staffers:
Ms. Burke's actions are shameful. While it might be ok to assign some policy-making responsibilities to a senior staffer, it doesn't make sense to turn substantial parts of her jobs plan to a contractor.
Posted Sunday, September 21, 2014 10:56 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 22-Sep-14 08:07 AM
Gary:
I wonder what report the spokes person was referring to? Wisconsin's most recent unemployment report had more jobs, less people unemployed, and more people wanting to be in the labor force. Aren't all three of those a good thing?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
