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By now, everyone’s familiar with the script for pharmaceutical ads. There’s the first part, typically featuring people frolicking in a flowery field. Then comes the quiet but rapid-fire list of potential side effects from taking the featured medication.
As someone who’s covered health care reform since former President Bill Clinton attempted it, I’ve often thought that political debates over this could benefit from having those drug-ad announcers come into the halls of Congress or the State Capitol and soberly intone the potential consequences of any changes under consideration.
Just as the ads’ lengthy list of side effects illustrates, fixes in medicine and health policy can sometimes create other problems. The good must be balanced against potential harm, requiring careful calibration. This is why legislation taking a new and unusual approach to sharpen state lawmakers’ cost-benefit calculations on an important annual matter of business — whether to expand the list of services and procedures covered by health insurance — merits the spotlight.
While I’m not yet ready to support the bill, because it calls for tapping taxpayer dollars to defray newly required benefits’ cost, the discussions it’s spurring are nevertheless an illuminating addition to the Minnesota Legislature’s 2025 health deliberations. The legislation’s lead authors, Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato, and Rep. Bernie Perryman, R-St. Augusta, are doing important work raising awareness about the cost “side effects” of hitting the easy button: saying yes to the yearly parade of advocates and industry representatives petitioning to add new kinds of care, services or products to required insurance coverage.
I ran across this legislation, SF 565/HF 400, while tracking a different bill that would strengthen mental health care during pregnancy and in the delicate months after childbirth. The commendable maternal health bill, SF 1085/HF 35, authored by Sen. Alice Mann, DFL-Edina, got a well-deserved airing before the Minnesota Senate’s Commerce and Consumer Protection Committee earlier this month.
But the Commerce Committee hearing that day turned out to be what Sen. Matt Klein, DFL-Mendota Heights, a physician who chairs the group, calls “Mandate Day.” The occasion is when advocates make their case to further expand the list of medical services or procedures that state-regulated health plans must cover. These are known as “mandated insurance benefits,” which explains the moniker Klein gave it.
Source: Should state pay for newly required insurance benefits?
