TO THE EDITOR:

MinnesotaCare is a health insurance program for low-income working people who canít afford health insurance and arenít eligible for welfare. The legislators who support dropping enrollees from MinnesotaCare cite cost control as a factor. Unfortunately, dropping people from MinnesotaCare will raise, not lower, our healthcare costs.

People who donít have health insurance will forgo basic treatment to save money. However, if they slip into a diabetic coma, develop pneumonia following an untreated respiratory infection, quit their asthma regimen, or suffer any other number of dangerous-yet-preventable health crises, they will seek treatment for themselves or their children at the emergency room. Acute crisis care (really, any care) at the emergency room costs much more than prevention and treatment at a medical clinic.

Cutting people from MinnesotaCare will not make them and their illnesses go away - they will simply seek more expensive treatment options when they become really sick. The cost will be passed on through subsidies (property taxes) or by increasing insurance premiums. In other words, since we donít want our hospitals to go out of business and arenít ready to let people die in the street, we pay the cost. We can keep programs like MinnesotaCare and pay less, or we can drop them and pay more.

How can we reduce healthcare costs?

Legislators might look at malpractice insurance, the malpractice insurance industry (a real moneymaker for the handful of companies that handle it), waste, fraud, managed care, and organizations that help keep the most expensive consumers out of the emergency system. These areas hold real potential for actually keeping healthcare costs down.

Benjamin Franklin said, ìAn ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.î His words certainly apply here - the proposed pound of cureÇ is going to cost us much more money than the ounce of prevention did.

Amy Ries
North Branch

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