Healthcare message comes to Fergus Falls

Published Friday, August 22, 2008

Rep. Paul Thissen has spent the past year traveling throughout Minnesota talking about health care reform, and on Thursday, the Minneapolis Democrat brought his message to Fergus Falls.

Thissen, chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, spoke at Minnesota State Community and Technical College, detailing some of the challenges of health care reform and listening to the concerns of local providers.

“It’s unbelievably helpful to hear from people who are on the ground,” Thissen said during an interview earlier in the day.

According to Thissen, over a quarter million of the Minnesotans with health insurance still spend a quarter of their incomes on health care. What Thissen said he’d like to see is a health care affordability standard, in which Minnesotans could spend no more than six to 10 percent of their incomes on health care without assistance from the government.

“Once you begin to spend more than that on health care, you’re really eating into other essentials,” he said.

Affordability is an issue across the state, but some health care challenges are unique to greater Minnesota, Thissen said. These include making infrastructure improvements (like developing electronic records), providing long-term care, and creating attractive communities for health care providers and their families.

Minnesota lawmakers began to make significant health care reforms last legislative session, Thissen said. They committed more money to primary care clinics in the hope that longer visits with doctors will improve patients’ long-term health. Lawmakers will also invest more money in public health, the idea being that resources to reduce obesity and smoking will also save money in the long run.

The goal, Thissen said, is to insure an additional 100,000 Minnesotans between 2007 and 2010.

Yet many challenges remain, Thissen said, including how to care for the state’s aging population. Instead of the state designating specific dollars for certain aspects of long-term care, he said, one idea is to give communities money to use where they see seniors’ greatest needs.

“The people who live here know best,” Thissen said.

Thissen’s visit was organized by first ward councilman Greg Stumbo, with help from the Central Minnesota Area Health Education Center out of MSCTC-Fergus Falls.