House Speaker Kurt Daudt is sounding the alarm after a report predicting skyrocketing premiums for those buying health insurance through the MNsure state exchange. In Willmar Thursday, Daudt said a couple he met earlier pays 23-hundred dollars a month for themselves and their son, with a 13-thousand-dollar deductible. “That was currently,” he says. “They don’t know what it’s gonna be next year because their current provider has pulled out of the marketplace.” Governor Mark Dayton admitted this week that “the Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable” and adjustments must be made at the state and federal levels.
Daudt says 150-thousand people are losing coverage because their provider is pulling out of the individual marketplace. He says “because of the caps that were allowed to be negotiated in place by the Dayton administration, there’s only about 19-thousand insurance slots with other providers available, so we’ve gotta figure out how to get — or *they* have to figure out how to get 150-thousand people into 19-thousand slots.” Daudt says he’d like to do away with the Affordable Care Act and go back to what Minnesota used to have — a four-tiered system using private insurance, Medical Assistance, MinnesotaCare and a plan that paid for people who could not get insurance elsewhere.