Chamber works to lower health care costs on Minnesota businesses

Health insurance is an increasingly important benefit, allowing employers to attract and retain talent in the marketplace and ensure their employees stay healthy and productive at work. And yet employers – especially small employers – are struggling with the high cost of health insurance.

At the Chamber, one of our top priorities is to ensure quality health care is affordable and accessible to all Minnesotans while enhancing the ability of employers to provide coverage to their employees
 

One major accomplishment at the 2019 Legislature was the extension of the state’s individual market reinsurance program for an additional two years. This is a big help for small employers who help their employees purchase insurance on the individual market, as well as for entrepreneurs who purchase insurance on their own.

Watch the Chamber’s Bentley Graves testify in committee on why the reinsurance program is good for Minnesota businesses. 

We also helped pass increased cost transparency, blocked efforts to make employers’ prescription drug benefits more expensive, and opposed efforts to establish a government-run health insurance plan, which would have disrupted the private market and increased the cost of employers’ insurance offerings due to its underpayment of health care providers and hospitals. 

Because health care is such an important issue for all Minnesotans, interest in these issues will again be high during the 2020 legislative session.