Sarah Greenfield, 1.3 million Minnesotans

2013 was an incredible legislative session to be part of the movement for universal healthcare in Minnesota.

Many years we find ourselves on the defense, working as hard as we can just to keep the public health care programs we have, forced to choose just one priority in order to win anything, with little or no additional capacity to think about the long term and move forward. This was not that year, but it wasn’t a cake-walk either.

Real people stepped up and stepped forward into the weedy, wonky world of “health insurance exchange” policy and wrestled it into a simple, urgent message: “People At The Center.” Rather than leaving it to “the experts,” Minnesotans called, emailed, and visited legislators and the Dayton administration to make sure that Minnesota’s new exchange, now called MNsure, was built to serve the needs of people who need healthcare, not the industry that profits off selling it. This meant fighting back the top priorities of big insurance companies in order to keep people on the payroll of big insurance off of our MNsure board, and to allow MNsure to negotiate with insurers for the best plans and the best prices.

At the same time, a strong alliance of diverse organizations worked with the Dayton administration and legislature to make sure that federal health care reform would maintain and expand MinnesotaCare into a model program for states around the country. The new and improved MinnesotaCare will have more affordable premiums, cover more of the care people need, and eliminate barriers to enrollment like long waiting periods and asset tests.

Our work isn’t over. None of these programs are changing lives yet – we need to make sure that Minnesotans of all races and walks of life actually gain access to newly available coverage and that that coverage translates into better health and major reductions in racial disparities in health.

And we need to go further – we have a hard-won opportunity in the coming years to build on these victories toward an integrated, truly universal health care system for Minnesota. We can get there the same way we got through this year: organizing to our strengths and coming together to our common values.

— Sarah

Sarah Greenfield is TakeAction Minnesota’s Health Care Program Manager.