Monthly Archives: January 2014

(Minneapolis) – Citing the independent MNSure report published this week, Republican Party Chairman Keith Downey is calling for MNsure to be shut down and for Minnesota to lead the nation by charting a new bi-partisan, consumer focused healthcare future.

“After blowing $160 million dollars, causing real harm to people in Minnesota and damaging our state’s nation-leading health care system, it is time for Governor Dayton to cut our losses and undo MNsure in his self titled “unsession” coming up,” said Downey. “The report basically recommends a do-over, but it’s impossible to believe we would see a different result. Government never should have tried to take over healthcare, and no number of do-overs can fix the real problem which is Obamacare itself.”

The independent report, issued by Optum at MNSure’s request, was highly critical of MNsure’s governance, operations and information systems. The recommendations prescribe re-work that in many cases means starting over with new operations and scrapping entire systems. The report also identifies a number of elements that do not yet exist and need to be completed from scratch. The major fixes are estimated to take over a year.

Downey stressed that prior to implementing Obamacare via MNsure, Minnesota covered a wider range of people than Obamacare does, and covered pre-existing conditions better than Obamacare does. Downey called for consumer focused solutions to improve health insurance, but recognized that it would not be possible while Obamacare controls what states can and cannot do.

Downey suggested that “Senator Franken and Governor Dayton need to take responsibility for the failure of Obamacare and its Minnesota MNsure implementation,” and “begin working in a bipartisan way at the state and federal level to undo the mistaken government takeover of healthcare.” In the meantime Downey says there are only “least worst” options, but the directional change is needed.

“Senator Franken was the deciding vote as the Democrats jammed Obamacare through without a single Republican vote. Here at home Governor Dayton and the Democrats passed and implemented MNsure without a single Republican, claiming they could do it better than the Feds, and believing that government is best equipped to run your health care. But now they’ve wasted all the money,” Downey continued. “Continuing to throw good money after bad on MNsure would be a huge mistake.”

Without its own Obamacare exchange, Minnesota would revert to using the federal exchange along with over 30 other states. The federal exchange is receiving ongoing infusions of cash from the federal government to fix its problems. “Using the federal exchange may be no better, but it won’t be worse,” Downey concluded. “At least we wouldn’t be paying double for two failures.”

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Prepared and Paid for by the Republican Party of Minnesota
Keith Downey, Chair
Not Authorized By Any Candidate or Candidate’s Committee