Final Legislative Update

To achieve their goals, the DFL returned little of the state’s nearly $18 billion surplus, added $10 billion in new taxes, and increased the state budget by approximately 30 percent. They called it a transformative session. Others used other less gracious terms. But first, two items of note:

CCHF won two privacy provisions, one in the so-called genetic privacy bill pushed by corporations seeking to use genetic data without consent and one in the cancer surveillance bill (p.120.6). Neither win was sufficient, but they were wins, providing protection that wasn’t in the bills before our testimony.
Shocker: DFL planning to oust health plans. The state of Minnesota is planning to take over the Medicaid/Medical Assistance program (p. 689.5). An implementation plan for a direct-pay, fee-for-service Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare program must be submitted by January 15, 2026. Getting rid of the corporate version of socialized medicine isn’t a bad idea, but this initiative is part of the DFL attempt to move to a single-payer government-run system – and THAT is a bad idea.

The 845-page, more-than-$2 billion health and human services bill is a disaster. I’ll briefly describe a few troubling items in SF 2995 (authors: Rep. Liebling/Sen. Wicklund) just to give you an idea of what kind of terrible transformation this is. Below, find more details on these 8 bullet points:

Building a universal health care system
Opening Medical Assistance to illegals
Adopting identity politics that divide
New intrusions in personal lives
They’re coming after the children
"Climate Resiliency Program"
Abortion free-for-all
Boatload of new bureaucracies

1. Building a universal health care system. The 2023 HHS omnibus bill (now law) includes:

Funding for universal health care financing system report – $5 million
Analysis of public option models, including MNCare option – $2.5 million
Report to transition from managed care (health plans) to direct government payment for Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare – but no designated appropriation (p.689.5)
$22M in FY 2025 contingent appropriation for a state government "public option" health care plan to compete with private insurance

2. Opening Medical Assistance to illegals. Beyond expanding services and reducing cost-sharing for government enrollees, the bill also:

Opened MNCare to 40,000 illegal immigrants — expected cost of $8 million in first two years; $100 million in second two years
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) individuals to stay enrolled until June 30, 2025
No deductibles, copays, and/or co-insurance for HIV prophylaxis drugs
No assets limits extended for two more years
No cost-sharing and deductions in MA starting Jan 1, 2024

3. Adopting identity politics that divide. The new law is rife with the language of "health disparities," "racial inequity," and "social determinants of health"— a term invented to let government intrude, interfere, and take control of your life and your choices under the guise of keeping you healthy. For example, the law:

Requires the collection of race and ethnicity at every health care encounter
Creates several African American-focused and American Indian-focused bureaucracies and grant programs to identify disparities in "housing, education, employment, gun violence, incarceration, environmental factors and health care discrimination."
HIV grants for counseling gay, bisexual, and transexual individuals
Perinatal quality collaborative to "identify methods that incorporate antiracism into individual practice and organization guidelines
Health equity advisory and leadership council and Equitable Health Care Task Force ($1.5 million)

4. New intrusions in personal lives. For years, CCHF has opposed the state All-Payer Claims Database, which holds "encounter data" from every doctor you visit, including diagnoses and treatments. Under the new law, the data will be used for research on, or efforts to effect transformation in, health care outcomes, access, quality, disparities, or spending." The new law also:

requires dentists to share data with the state health department
requires third-party administrators to report the number of self-insured companies refusing to allow all their employee’s data to be shared
Allows data on individual health care providers to be released and published
Sharing patient cancer data with all 50 states and the federal government
Long Covid surveillance, database, and research without consent

5. They’re coming after the children. The DFL pass a law that will pay for "social-emotional screening" of children from birth to kindergarten. At a cost of $20 million, it will also "modernize" state technology systems to collect and monitor "nonbiometric data on children." Another $12 million will be spent on government "home-visiting" programs.

6. Climate resiliency program. Therefore, more than $1 million will fund a new "Climate Resiliency program" in the Minnesota Department of Health (MN Stat. 144.9981). The program must:

Increase awareness of climate change
Track the public health impacts of climate change and extreme weather events
Provide technical assistance and tools that support climate resiliency to local health departments

7. Abortion "free-for-all". Previous limits and prohibitions on abortion were repealed, allowing abortions for anything considered "medically necessary." In addition: payment for abortions increased by 20%, no cost-sharing for contraceptives, birthing centers, and nurses are now allowed to participate in abortions, many abortion reporting requirements deleted, reporting of the number of employers that don’t have to provide abortion coverage, certain freedom of conscience rights repealed, and the penalty for coercing someone into sterilization or abortion by threatening them with the loss of access to government services…was repealed.

8. Boatload of new bureaucracies. This bill has so much more bad stuff, but I’ll end with this. Beyond the "divide and conquer" bureaucracies being created to focus on African American and Indian "health and racial disparities," the new law includes (but is not limited to) the following new bureaucracies and government programs:

Department of Children, Youth, Families – $14M
Health Subcabinet – $1.1M
Center for Health Care Affordability – $6.6M plus $8M for the next biennium
Long Covid research initiative – $6.2 million
Transformation grants for the public health system – $19.1 million

Rumors hint at a plan to create another priority list for the 2024 session. Given the trepidation I read in the words of some less-than-conservative news reporters, DFL leadership might want to rethink their strategy. Even liberals like to have more money in their pockets at the end of the day, not higher taxes and more bureaucracy.

Twila Brase, RN, PHN
President and Co-founder

Citizens' Council for Health Freedom (CCHF) was founded in 1998 as a patient-centered national health freedom organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota. CCHF exists to protect patient and doctor freedom. In 2016, CCHF launched The Wedge of Health Freedom® (www.JointheWedge.com). CCHF sponsors the Health Freedom Minute, which airs on more than 870 radio stations nationwide. Listeners can learn more about proposed state and national health care initiatives and steps they can take to protect their health care choices and privacy.

Our mailing address:
CCHF
161 St. Anthony Ave., Ste. 923
St. Paul, MN 55103

To contact us:
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