Governor Mark Dayton is enlisting citizens’ help as he pushes the legislature to allow any Minnesotan to buy health insurance through state-run Minnesotacare — which Republican leaders say will not happen. Butterfield farmer Brian Romsdahl says his family is paying over 33 thousand dollars a year for health insurance. Romsdahl says, “I don’t know if, with the declining crop prices, how much longer a lot of farm families like us are going to be able to hang in there.”
House Republicans’ health care point man, Dellwood Representative Matt Dean, says the solution is not to expand government-run health care, which did not work under the Affordable Care Act. Dean says, “If people are able to [and] more people can afford to buy private insurance, that’s gonna lower the cost for everybody — and people understand that.”
Less than two weeks remain in the legislative session.