Calling Health Justice Advocates to Action: Support Patient Centered Care
- scvindivisible
- Aug 28
- 2 min read
Join us in supporting the Patient Centered Care (PCC) Bill (SF1059/HF255), authored by Senator John Marty and Representative Tina Liebling and introduced in the 2024-2025 legislative session. You can easily send a letter of support to your Minnesota Senator and Representative by clicking on this link. Please feel free to modify it and tell legislators why preserving Medicaid is important to you.
We support the PCC Bill for these reasons:
In the face of huge budget cuts and other changes to Medicaid (in Minnesota, it's called Medical Assistance) this bill may be a lifeline for the state's ability to continue to provide critical healthcare services.
The bill will improve patient access to health care providers and reduce shortages of health care services.
It will deliver quality health care to Medical Assistance recipients in a least-cost manner by reducing administrative costs to the State of Minnesota and providers.
About the PCC bill and why it's important
The “direct provider payment” PCC Bill directs the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) to stop funneling our tax dollars through middlemen (i.e., HMOs/managed care organizations/integrated health partnerships/insurance companies), and instead directly pay doctors and hospitals who treat Medical Assistance and MNCare Patients.
By directly paying providers, we can greatly reduce state healthcare spending that doesn't go for care – 10-15% according to Health Care for All Minnesota policy analysts. In 2022, HMOs made over 2/3rds of a billion dollars in profits on MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance --$675 million in profit! Clearly, many of our tax dollars, intended for healthcare, are instead going to the insurer's profits. Legislators have a clear choice: protect the healthcare of their constituents or the profits of insurers
The bill also has provisions to improve patient access to health care providers and improve shortages of health care services for Minnesotans enrolled in MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance.
Passage of this legislation would significantly restore the losses of the Big “Ugly” Law's bill and provide a way for Minnesota to continue to offer these critical health services, even in the face of federal cuts.
Comments