Minneapolis Star Tribune, Feb. 7
Get to ’yes’ swiftly on Minnesota insulin bill
Assistance would save lives, and compromises are critical to quickly make it a reality.
State lawmakers will return to the Capitol Tuesday. If they care about having a healthy, productive session, they ought to heed an early diagnosis from one of their physician colleagues, Sen. Scott Jensen, R-Chaska.
An emergency insulin assistance bill needs to pass early in the session, Jensen said. This legislation, which would provide this lifesaving medication to diabetics who can’t afford a new supply, got lost in last year’s end-of-session chaos. Despite vows to pass it in a special session, and despite a flurry of offers exchanged in January between House DFLers and Senate Republicans, there was no special session and nothing has been enacted.
That’s left insulin advocates rightly angry and energized. And it has influential advocates like Jensen and his colleague, Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, vowing to lead the charge on swift passage. With emotions running high, “right now this is sucking all the oxygen out of the room,” Jensen said this week.
Jensen’s right. The Legislature has a full agenda this session, but to get to these other issues, it’s imperative that it first take care of this unfinished business. To its credit, the House DFL has already put together a well-crafted bill. Senate Republicans do not have a bill, and for timeliness reasons they ought to take up the House bill as a starting point. Opportunities to find common ground are plentiful.
That legislators need to be told to act swiftly is just shameful. Last spring, after the session failed to enact a bill, there was bipartisan agreement that no one should die from rationing insulin. Tragically, the death of a young Minnesotan made the need clear. In 2017, 26-year-old Alec Smith, a diabetic, died after rationing his medication. He didn’t qualify for medical assistance programs but didn’t make enough to afford insulin.
Both DFLers and Republicans have crafted proposals to help people like Alec. Key differences have been over eligibility, program copays, where patients would get insulin and how to pay program costs. Republicans have also wanted to sunset the program, while DFLers have pushed to include elderly Minnesotans on Medicare who struggle to pay for insulin.
The legislative priority should be on putting as few hurdles as possible between insulin and those who urgently need it; often these are Minnesotans without insurance or who have high-deductible insurance plans.
Including Medicare enrollees, who often can’t use manufacturer assistance programs, is a must. Ensuring affordable copays is also imperative. The $75 copay for a 30-day supply in the GOP’s Jan. 21 proposal is far too high.
The stickiest holdup in negotiations appears to be over funding the program, which does not yet have a cost estimate. Republicans’ current proposal doesn’t ask pharmaceutical manufacturers for enough aid and basically gives them credit for something they’re already doing: patient assistance programs that are limited in duration or may be hard to access. A substantial registration fee on manufacturers as a condition of doing business here, a model pioneered by the state’s opioid bill, would be sensible.
The state’s insulin advocates certainly have the moral high ground in their demands for insulin makers to pick up the program’s entire cost. If they want the bill passed quickly, however, a compromise is needed. It likely involves also using some of the state’s provider tax revenue. Sharing the cost burden this way would take away a reason some Republicans vote no. Fairly or not, they see asking firms to foot the entire bill as a punishment.
The fund the provider tax flows into has a balance of $636 million. Dipping into it for a relatively small amount, an expected $1 million to $2 million, while expecting to raise a similar sum from drugmakers, is a reasonable way to make a deal and start saving lives.
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The Free Press of Mankato, Feb. 9
Legislature: Solve bonding, insulin, gun violence issues
Why it matters: A short session and non-budget year should give legislators opportunity to solve important policy issues.
Insulin affordability. Gun violence. Small-town water treatment plants. Voter privacy.
These are just a few of the critical issues the Minnesota Legislature should get serious about tackling when it gavels open its session this week.
While election years can create incentives for elected leaders to go all talk and no action, Minnesotans shouldn’t accept that. There are too many critical policy issues to solve, many left unfinished in last year’s less than perfect finish.
These pages have long advocated for a solution to the affordability of insulin. Every day we wait to solve this problem, diabetics and others may be risking their lives as these choose between groceries and medicine.
The sticking point revolves around how to pay for the program. Democrats mostly pointed to pharmaceutical companies, while Republicans see that state subsidizing at least part of a program and pharmaceutical companies participating in other ways.
Legislators should compromise and get this done quickly.
Another proposal we favor is the changing of the primary election law so voters can opt-out of providing political parties information on which party they chose. Again, this should be done quickly. We can accept either plan from Democrats or Republicans, both of whom offer opt-out or privacy. The Republican leaders in the Senate say they oppose changing the law.
Legislators should also pass commonsense gun background checks that exempt family transfers and red flag laws that protect victims of domestic abuse by taking away abusers guns after due process.
And finally, small towns all over Minnesota have water treatment upgrade bills their taxpayers and populations cannot afford. Some state assistance with financing, bonding or funding seems reasonable to keep small towns vital.
There’s plenty to do this session. How much gets done will tell Minnesotans whether their leaders were interested in solving problems or creating chances for election-year gotchas.
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St. Cloud Times, Feb. 7
Partisan politics tramples credibility of impeachment process
The scariest aspect of the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump is how both sides of the aisle dramatically weakened the tools the Founding Fathers provided to allow the three branches of government to hold each other accountable.
In the wake of this sprint to a hollow, half-baked answer, one question stands out: In the next push for impeachment, what will the House and Senate be willing to rush through, overlook and ignore so politics dictate the final answer?
Never mind justice. Never mind a fair trial. Never mind the principles upon which our country was founded. And, in this case, certainly never mind those Republican senators who essentially admitted Trump was guilty but lacked the moral compass to hold him accountable.
The only lesson America learned from this impeachment is that the House and the Senate are filled with political pawns, rather than lawmakers fulfilling their oaths to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Had that been the case, the Democrat-led House impeachment team would have used the full force of the courts to enforce subpoenas issued to key witnesses, hear their testimony and gain access to key documents the Trump White House refused to release.
Instead, with eyes clearly focused on the next election, they rushed through their process - apparently hoping the Senate trial would do that hard work for them. Or perhaps they realized their case was not going to rise to the justifiably high standards for removal from office set by the founders.
The Republican-led Senate proved even more pathetic. When confronted with overwhelming proof that the House did not provide all the evidence, a majority of senators chose blind allegiance to party and voted in favor of the president instead of pursuit of the truth. Among the tools at their disposal, but not used, are hearing witness testimony and cross-examining those witnesses.
Worse yet - and proving their spines are made of political pudding, not courage - many Republican senators admitted outside of the trial in chambers that the president was probably guilty.
Partisans, please don’t go blind trying to see this for the color you loathe - or love.
Rather read this for what it is: a commentary about elected officials from both parties who put their partisan allegiances above the constitutional oaths they took after you elected them.
Their irresponsible handling of the impeachment process itself - not the outcome - has weakened our democracy. How? By taking a sharp tool that should be treated with the utmost gravity - the impeachment process - and dulling it with contempt.
Their overriding obligation was - and must always be - to fully and fairly utilize the processes put in place by the framers to make sure questionable actions of elected officials in all branches of government are thoroughly examined based on all relevant facts. Their collective decisions made of a mockery of that process, setting a precedent for future proceedings to also wield impeachment like a double-cross on a reality TV show rather than the act of statesmen and stateswomen.
The result not only further divides America today, but it seriously weakens the nation future generations will inherit.
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