Governor Dayton is still awaiting approval from the Trump administration on the state’s reinsurance waiver–and even though he’s urging action A-S-A-P, he says he’s “never experienced anything like this. I can’t even get the commissioner of health and human services on the telephone. I can’t even get a phone number to call him to raise the issue.” Dayton expressed his frustration today and says “what they urged us to do, we’ve done it exactly the way they told us to and now we’re pushing the end of September and we can’t get official approval necessary. It’s just unfathomable.” The reinsurance program was put in place by state lawmakers last session to lower premiums for people buying insurance on the individual market.
Dayton says the waiver would reduce health insurance premiums in the individual marketplace by around 20-percent. But, he says as a result of federal cuts being proposed, the state is at risk of losing nearly $370 million in MinnesotaCare funding for the state’s most vulnerable citizens.