Commentary; Posted: 5/14/03

Health and Human Services bill is penny wise, pound foolish

Rep. Rebecca Otto
Guest Columnist

The Health and Human Service bill that was passed in the House of Representatives last week was penny wise and pound foolish.

This bill is the kind of short-sighted government waste that really socks it to the taxpayer. By cutting 68,000 Minnesotans health insurance, for example, we eliminate the cost of these people utilizing clinics. This may sound like a cost saving measure, but the truth of the matter is that it will end up costing the state far more money than it saves.

According to state law, people cannot be denied treatment at an emergency room, regardless of ability to pay. In addition, people without health insurance will go to expensive emergency rooms for treatment instead of clinics, which are far cheaper.

This will drive up taxpayer costs. The hospitals will treat people without health insurance and then turn around and seek reimbursement from the state, which they are entitled to do under law.

Minnesota taxpayers will be paying to treat people at a premium, first-class emergency room prices. In addition to significant cuts to health insurance, the cuts to child care will also cost Minnesota taxpayers money. The 2003 Health and Human Services bill cut child care by $87.4 million.

In the past month I have had many calls and emails from single or divorced mothers, who are raising their kids on a single income but also attending school to advance their earning potential - with the hopes of making enough money to pay for child care on their own.

The child care assistance program is designed as short-term support to help moms help themselves, so they arenít reduced to going on welfare with their kids.

Many of these moms are people you and I know. They are in our church. Their kids go to school with our kids. Without child care assistance, many of these mothers will not be able to continue to work due to increased child care costs.

How much money will the state save by stripping child care away from single mothers and driving them on to the state welfare program? This will only result in rolling back the savings we worked for under welfare reform.

Finally, the elimination of Meals on Wheels is yet another example of this flawed Health and Human Services Bill.

Meals on Wheels is a program that uses volunteers to deliver 195,470 meals to seniors in our area every year. This keeps seniors in their homes and out of state funded nursing homes.

Every day we keep a senior in their home at the cost of $4.50 a meal, we save 24 times that in daily nursing home costs. What is a wiser investment - spending $4.50 a day for Meals on Wheels or spending $108 dollars a day for nursing home care?

Obviously, our state is in a major financial crisis and we need to find ways that we can trim our budget.

However, as a small business owner, clearly, these cuts make no sense. They are a blatant waste of taxpayer resources. At this critical time in our state, the last thing we need to do is drive up costs by poor planning and, political expediency.

No matter how you slice it, package it or market it, the 2003 Health and Human Services Bill clearly is penny wise and pound foolish.

Writer Rebecca Otto lives in May Township and is the DFL House member from District 52B. She is a former ISD 831 School Board member.

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