Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s new health care plan for Minnesota governor presents her as the champion who lowered costs, protected the state’s medical device industry, and took on powerful interests. It’s been 20 years since Amy Klobuchar left for Washington DC, and Minnesotans now pay more to get less for our health care, and her votes tell that story.
At a meeting of the delegates of the American Medical Association in his hometown of Chicago, President Obama promised, “Together, if we take all these steps, I am convinced we can bring spending down, bring quality up; we can save hundreds of billions of dollars on health care costs while making our health care system work better for patients and doctors alike.”
In December 2009, Klobuchar voted yes on final passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). That bill contained the 2.3 percent medical device excise tax. The tax increase was written into the law to charge medical device companies targeted tax. Minnesota, home to Medtronic, Boston Scientific, 3M’s health care division, was smacked with a disproportionate share of the burden.
During the Senate debate Klobuchar worked to reduce the size of the tax from earlier, larger proposals. She still cast the deciding vote that made the final version law. Only after the tax took effect in 2013 and began hitting Minnesota manufacturers did she become one of its most persistent opponents. She co-sponsored repeal legislation, led bipartisan amendments, and worked for temporary suspensions. The tax was permanently repealed in the December 2019 spending package. Her campaign website now highlights that she “led the successful fight to repeal the medical device tax that threatened thousands of Minnesota jobs.” It does not mention that she first voted to create the tax.
Minnesota media documented the multi-year industry campaign against a levy she enacted. Rep Erik Paulsen who opposed the tax and led the charge to repeal it, must have been surprised to learn that Senator Klobuchar was fighting the tax increase she just voted for. The Star Tribune profiled the millions of dollars lobbying to remove the hundreds of millions in taxes imposed on them to fund Obamacare, including more than $90,000 to Klobuchar in just one year.
The same 2009 vote gave Minnesota the sharpest sustained individual-market premium increases in modern history. National average premiums in the individual market more than doubled between 2013 and 2019, according to analyses of insurer medical-loss-ratio filings. Benchmark silver-plan premiums have nearly tripled from pre-ACA levels. Deductibles rose in parallel. These increases were the direct result of guaranteed-issue rules, community rating, essential health benefits mandates, and actuarial-value requirements that replaced the previous underwritten market. Younger and healthier buyers who previously paid lower premiums based on risk saw the largest percentage increases, forcing everyone into more expensive plans.
The Medicaid expansion brought to Minnesota under Obamacare, was designed to eliminate the uninsured in this state. Today, the uninsurance rate is 5.8%. When Senator Klobuchar was sworn into office that number was 7.2%. So in 20 years, we have lost our spot as the undisputed leader in quality, doubled the number of people on Medicaid from 2006 to 2026 and exploded the budget. All this to lower the uninsurance rate 1.2%? And the vast majority of those still uninsured remain eligible for a taxpayer funded program.
Senator Klobuchar certainly did not have to begin her health care plan around federalizing care in this state through Obamacare. She was in Washington DC and cast the deciding vote. Minnesota should have been the last state in the country to adopt it, but we were among the first, because we had the most to lose. And boy, did we. We couldn’t keep our plans we liked. We couldn’t keep our doctors either. And the state is going broke trying to pay for a plan that was supposed to save money.
More to follow.