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FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004

NATIONAL REPORT PRAISES MINNESOTA

FOR EXPANDING ACCESS TO HEALTH COVERAGE FOR ADULTS

WASHINGTON, D.C. (January 30, 2004) – An assessment of health care in the 50 states, released here today, finds that Minnesota is a leader in efforts to help provide health care insurance for its citizens. Minnesota has the lowest rate of uninsured adults in the country, with only 10 percent of its non-elderly adults going without coverage. By contrast, California has 23 percent uninsured; even neighboring Wisconsin--which itself is a leader in this area--has 12 percent. The report appears in the February 2004 issue of Governing magazine.

“Although leaders have been wrestling with the problem of the uninsured in America for a while, it’s pretty clear that no one has all the answers,” says Katherine Barrett, co-author of the report. “But Minnesota has developed a national reputation for its efforts in this critical field. The fact is, states with high levels of uninsured often wind up paying for their health care costs anyhow--the only other option would be letting people die in the streets, and thank goodness that’s not happening in any of the states.”

According to the authors, Minnesota “has one of the highest rates of employer coverage, the most generous public coverage for parents and a state-funded program for childless adults, although this was cut back some last year. A strong safety net is also in place for the people who still fall through the cracks.”

Minnesota leaders reveal in the report that they’re still not satisfied, though, and many obstacles remain. “People will say that individual states can be incubators of new ideas,” the state’s Medicaid director told Governing, “but employers have to be competitive across all states. Even our public programs can’t be dramatically different from our border states or we wouldn’t be able to afford it.”

Governing’s analysis of state-funded health care is part of the Government Performance Project, a six-year-old effort, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to evaluate a wide range of state government management and policy functions. This year’s special report focuses on six critical health care problems facing states: long-term care, public health, mental health, prescription drugs, access to care for the uninsured, and care for children.

The Government Performance Project found and documented the inability of the 50 states’ health care system to deliver improvements in medicine fairly and consistently to many of their citizens. Health care in most states is not just inadequate, the study concluded--it’s deteriorating. “After exhaustive analysis and hundreds of interviews,” says Peter Harkness, Governing’s publisher and editor, “it became clear that there is a health care crisis in America. But it is in no way a medical crisis. It is a fiscal crisis.”

Governing is a policy and management magazine aimed at high-level state and local government officials. An online version of this report will be available at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/intro.htm as of January 29. Press releases for each of the 50 states can be found at http://www.governing.com/gpp/2004/press.htm.

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