Paul Thissen: Innovation in Action

Thissen votes against GAMC cut on floor

Paul voted against the GAMC cut/compromise bill today.  The full text of his speech on the floor of the Minnesota House is below:

View the video of Paul’s speech here.

By passing this bill, we are once again giving in to a Governor who holds good policy hostage like a playground bully.  This legislation will not work.  As legislators – for the good of Minnesota – we must stop giving in to the Governor.  And we should start today.

I deeply appreciate the hard work of my diligent colleagues who have labored in good faith to protect the poorest, most vulnerable Minnesotans and every one of us who rely on strong hospitals in emergencies and sickness.

I deeply respect and appreciate the work of advocates in the Save GAMC coalition who have worked so hard to be the voice for those who usually have no voice in this building.  Indeed, the only reason I considered voting for this bill is to honor the work of that coalition and thousands of Minnesotans across the state who recognized the immorality of the GAMC veto and took action.

Believe me, I know how hard that work has been.  After Governor Pawlenty vetoed GAMC for the first time last spring, several of us spent the summer traveling Minnesota listening to patients and GAMC recipients, hospitals and health care professionals about how we could make GAMC work for Minnesota.  We visited shelters and homeless camps along the river.  We learned that meaningful and lasting reform required a focus on not only the care delivered in the hospital and clinic, but also helping people stabilize their lives with housing support and chemical dependency treatment.  Regardless of what some may think, real reform does not come cheap.

The culmination of these conversations was a workable piece of legislation that spent less money but protected vulnerable Minnesotans and made sure that hospitals could care for all of their patients.  But the Governor threatened a veto and we blinked.

We reached another compromise – worse policy but workable — which passed this body with a resounding bipartisan vote of 125 to 9.  Yet, despite that overwhelming support both within and outside of the state capitol, Tim Pawlenty again vetoed our GAMC solution.

And on a party line vote, the House Republicans refused to override the veto – with 38 Republicans flip-flopping to back up the bully in the Governor’s office.

The Democrats — with big hearts, good intentions and desperate for a solution — returned to so-called “negotiations” with the Governor.

Now we are left with an unworkable bill.  We all know it.  It is underfunded — $80 million or more less than the Governor’s auto-enrollment proposal.  It is poorly designed.  It will mean job losses.  We’ve heard that from hospitals and other providers from all across the state.  We have heard that from advocates for the clients currently served under GAMC.

We should remember that the simply because the Governor defines reform in three words – “spend less money” –we don’t have to agree with him.  Starvation is not a path to meaningful and lasting reform.  That’s a lesson we all should have learned by now.

Members. there is a fine line between compromise and caving in.  We are not on the right side of that line this time.

Fortunately, we have another option before us.  The passage of federal health reform on Sunday changed the game.  It offered us a different way to serve the people now covered under GAMC.  The details and implications of that proposal need to be explored.  But the Governor’s rejection of that option out of hand with no real understanding of what it means is nearly incomprehensible.

Let’s do the right thing for Minnesotans this time and reject Governor Pawlenty’s bullying.  Let’s stand up for the people of Minnesota.  Let’s extend the current GAMC program for a few months – just as we are doing in this bill – and take a few weeks to figure out whether and how to maximize federal health care dollars for current GAMC recipients.  Let’s do it in consultation with the experts who actually deliver care and serve patients instead of behind closed doors.  And let’s actually enact a policy that works for Minnesota.

Why are we choosing an unworkable surrender when we should be choosing a sensible solution that protects vulnerable Minnesotans and all of us?

We seem to have forgotten that inside-the-Capitol logic is often illogical.   We have done better by vulnerable Minnesotans – our neighbors, friends, siblings, and children – in even the recent past.

Members – let’s not cave in to Governor Pawlenty’s threat to kick the poorest, most vulnerable Minnesotans to the side of the road if we do not do his bidding right now.  This bill is not “the best we can do.”  This proposal is not “better than nothing.”  This bill is not a step forward; it’s a step back.

I urge you to vote No.

Remarks on the Children’s Health Security Act

Thank you to Senator Lourey for his support of this legislation.  And also thank you to the organizations that have formed the Make Health Happen coalition – representing over 350,000 Minnesotans.

For the past several years, many of us in this room have worked tirelessly to make sure that every Minnesota child can see a doctor or a nurse when he or she needs to.  In 2007, the Cover All Kids legislation passed overwhelmingly in the Minnesota House and formed a centerpiece for some of the most critical health care achievements of the Session.  We made important progress, covering nearly 40,000 more children and over 100,000 more adults.

Unfortunately, the work to cover all kids in Minnesota remains unfinished.

Today, there are 80,000 children in Minnesota who are living without health insurance and are just one health care crisis away from catastrophe.  That fact remains unacceptable in Minnesota, budget crisis or not.  I am standing here today because, even as legislators start putting on their green eye-shades and taking out their scalpels, we cannot lose sight of our larger moral and political obligation to do right by the next generation.

I will never forget the mother I met in Rochester who worked her way out of poverty, got her diploma and got a job that offered health benefits only to discover that single coverage was affordable but family coverage for her seven year old son was exorbitantly expensive.  I immediately thought of my own three children and having to make an economically unavoidable decision to leave my children uninsured.  Minnesota is better than leaving any family in that position.

Most certainly, the current economic crisis does nothing to diminish the need for quality, affordable health care for all the children in this state.  In fact, I would argue that the state’s current economic crisis is exactly the time when we need to act boldly.

Affordable, meaningful health care for all, starting with children, is a necessary part of an economic recovery, especially if we want that recovery to be sustainable and stable.

The Minnesota Health Security Act would offer immediate help to Minnesota families facing the threat of a foreclosure due to unpaid medical bills or who recently lost a job and are struggling to afford the costs of coverage.

Businesses, especially small businesses, in Minnesota would see immediate relief from rising health insurance costs and might be able to avoid layoffs or even raise wages.  This is exactly the kind of economic stimulus that our state needs at a time when we are facing historic and unprecedented unemployment.

Moreover, this is true reform.  The Minnesota Health Security Act will streamline all existing health care programs for children, taking multiple programs and turning them into one seamless system, a move that would considerably reduce the administrative duplication and redundancy at DHS.  Long term savings for the state would also result from increased use of preventive care and reduced hospital admissions.

We have made important progress on health care reform in the past two years and it is work that needs to continue.  But Minnesota needs more than technical changes in how our health care system works.  Minnesotans want a vision, a pathway to a health care system that works for them and that is there for them.  The Minnesota Health Security Act provides that vision and pathway.

I look forward to working with all of the people here today and people across this state on this critical next step.

Speech at Dedication of All Veterans Memorial

I am very honored to be with you this afternoon to participate in the unveiling of the All Veterans Memorial.

Thank you to all of you who have played such a significant role in making the idea of this Memorial a reality.

There is no more fitting place for this Memorial to rise than in Richfield – a community built by veterans, a community marked for decades by the spirit of civic engagement lived out by those men and women.

But it is also important to remember that this is a Memorial to Veterans from across the State of Minnesota. Men and women from all corners of the state will be memorialized on the tablets here.

It is for that reason that I was proud to be part of an effort in the state legislature – with leadership from Sen Dan Larson and Rep Linda Slocum and Governor Pawlenty – to get the State of Minnesota to invest $100,000 in state resources to match the incredibly generous private support of countless individuals and groups like the IBEW. Read Full Entry…

Speech to the Minnesota Pipe Trades on Jobs

Thank you for allowing me to speak to you for a few minutes.  It has been a great pleasure to work with your groups and particularly Carl Crimmins and Tom Hansen before he retired on issues at the capitol.

During his 1960 campaign, John Kennedy spoke here in Minnesota and he defined the challenge facing the country this way:

The reason Minnesota has suffered recent recessions is because the economy has not been moving.  Other countries have outproduced us economically, not because they have more capacity, but because they are using their capacity to the fullest.  We have not used our economic capacity or the capacity of our citizens in an imaginative way.  This country – and I would say this state – cannot possibly maintain itself unless it moves here at home, unless we maintain full employment and we meet our responsibilities to our own citizens.”

Kennedy was right.  The key to our success; the key to our prosperity is making sure we use all our resources and every Minnesotan to his or her fullest capacity.

Minnesotans want to work; they value labor and skill. My family has been in the state since the 1860s working as farmers and laborers and teachers and railroadmen.  Minnesotans are all about hard work.

We need to create a state where hard work and high skill can be put to good use. Read Full Entry…

Introductory Remarks at Jewish Community Center Forum on Health Care

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this forum and for your willingness to come out and listen and discuss health care in Minnesota.

I firmly believe that how we handle the challenge of health care (along with the issue of energy and climate change) will be the defining domestic issue of our time.

Getting it right is an economic imperative and a political imperative.  But I am pleased at the context in which tonight’s discussion is taking place, because getting health care right is above all a moral imperative.

Just as past generations in this country have worked for and made progress toward economic security and racial equity and justice, in our time we must move forward toward health care for all.

We often frame that discussion as a matter of “universal coverage” and focus on the fact of how many among us remain uninsured.

And that is important; indeed, it could be a matter of life or death.  According to an analysis by Families USA, three working age Minnesotans die each week due to lack of health insurance.  This is a problem we have to solve. Read Full Entry…