Amy knows we need a health care system that works better. In the current biennium the state of Minnesota is spending slightly over $7 billion, and is estimating an increase of over 30% in the next biennium with more increases on the horizon. Minnesotans want a health care system that gets costs under control, delivers quality care, and provides affordable access for everyone. We also want a system that emphasizes prevention, provides consumers with useful and easily accessible information, and recognizes government’s role in assuring fairness, effectiveness, and efficiency of the system.
Amy supports solutions that manage the rising costs of health care, expand access that is affordable, and maintain quality of our health care services including mental health services for children and adults. These solutions include:
- Explore options to reform public health programs. This does not mean we eliminate coverage for those in need and pretend that it is a cost-saving. Health care is not affordable for most people, and absolutely inaccessible for some. Eliminating coverage would only increase costs. What we can do is increase prevention and education efforts and work more collaboratively with community partners
- Explore additional quality and affordable health care services for our older adults. People are living longer and most of our health care budget is dedicated to services for our older adults. Decreasing services is not an option, but we can work together to create better solutions such as more community based alternatives to expensive nursing homes and facilities with fair reimbursement so they can invest in new care technologies that can reduce costs and improve the quality of life for those in a nursing home.
- Provide incentives for people who take advantage of preventative care and choose good health habits.
- Provide compensation to health providers for improving the health of people, and not just procedures and treatments. We should be paying for what we know works and hold health care providers accountable for the decisions they make and require estimates up front before decisions are made, when this is able to happen.
- We need to better coordinate care for expensive chronic conditions.
- Expand our investment in technology by giving people ownership of their health records.
Amy strongly advocates for the expansion of mental health and chemical dependency services to be included in coverage.
