Family medical accounts are one option a special state Senate panel is looking at, as a way to control health care costs in Minnesota. Glencoe Republican Representative Glenn Gruenhagen proposes the accounts be available for all Medicaid recipients except the disabled and those in nursing homes. He says it would be “an incentive for Medicaid patients now to… choose more wisely their health care because they’re spending money that they could save for themselves down the road.”
Gruenhagen contends micromanagement by government and insurance company bureaucrats won’t reduce health care costs. He drew chuckles from the audience, telling what he did when he was last in the doctor’s office with the nurse: “I started looking around the office, behind the examination table, under the desk. And she said, well, what are you looking for? I said, I’m looking for that invisible government bureaucrat and insurance bureaucrat that’s in this room that’s gonna tell us, what kind of care, if I get care and when I get care. And that’s where we’re at.”
The special committee is meeting regularly at the State Capitol and will make recommendations to the 2018 Minnesota Legislature.
Here’s Gruenhagen’s testimony Thursday before the Minnesota Senate’s Select Committee on Health Care Consumer Access & Affordability: