MANKATO —  

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of a bipartisan health care reform plan for the poor will push millions of dollars in costs to hospitals, raise health care premiums, and leave thousands of veterans and others without health care.

The Minnesota House on Monday tried to override the governor’s veto, but were unable to do so. That’s unfortunate.

When 147 hospitals in Minnesota have their leader tell legislators he hopes they can override the governor’s veto, people of Minnesota served by those hospitals should take note.

That’s exactly the testimony Minnesota Hospital Association President Lawrence Massa provided to a legislative committee last week.

“We are hopeful that a GAMC veto override is still a possibility” Massa told the Senate Health and Human Services Budget Division committee. This comes from an organization that is nonpartisan.

He was referring to Pawlenty’s veto of a bipartisan bill that would extend the General Assistance Medical Care program for the poorest Minnesotans for 16 months. The bill would keep people on care they need and prevent them from ending up in emergency rooms where costs to taxpayers would be higher. 

Massa estimated the governor’s proposal to move many of the recipients to MinnesotaCare would cost the hospitals about $83 million in uncompensated care and other costs compared to the compromise proposal fashioned by Democrats and Republicans.

The other reform measure by House and Senate leaders would extend the GAMC program for 16 months, giving the Legislature more time for needed reforms. Pawlenty vetoed the measure, he said, because it did not contain enough reforms.

This after members of his own party worked in a bipartisan way with the Democrats and 38 of 47 Republicans voted for the plan. Numerous interest groups, including the Catholic Church, have said the GAMC needs to be extended and preserved. If nothing is done in the next day or two to solve the problems, GAMC recipients will receive a letter that will say they are no longer covered.

Gov. Pawlenty says the DFL isn’t negotiating. They say they’ve met with him seven times in the last several days. They did concede a hospital tax he did not like earlier in negotiations. That, in fact, is what caused a lot of Republicans to sign onto the bill. It’s unfortunate the governor has forced his fellow Republicans into this situation. Unlike him, many have to stand for re-election having voted against health care for veterans.

Unfortunately, the real consequences of this split will show up in every small community that has a hospital in the state. The Minnesota Hospital Association has estimated that the Mankato hospital will lose $5.3 million a year under Pawlenty’s plan compared to the compromise plan.

A host of small hospitals around the state will suffer a similar fate. Waseca would lose $70,000, St. Peter $100,000, and New Ulm would lose $180,000. St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester would lose $3.3 million, according to the hospital association.

The governor’s plan would put the MinnesotaCare fund into deficit. That is funded in part with a tax on health care providers so it would get back to the thing that Republicans apparently opposed in the first place. Health care providers could end up paying higher taxes through MinnesotaCare.

And most importantly, the governor’s own Department of Human Services estimated some 16,000 to 20,000 people would not be covered under the conversion from GAMC to MinnesotaCare.

We’ve gone backwards in this debate from a bipartisan solution to no solution, one that will not only hurt patients - individuals who need health care and are least able to afford it - but also the care providers who courageously try to serve them. As chief executive of the state, the governor should be part of the solution not part of the problem.

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