Minnesota Engagement

Attorney's Minority Report to MN Genetic Info Report

CCHF Letter to Gov. Pawlenty Opposing Government-Issued Treatment Protocols

After our delivery in May 2004, citizen petitions continued to arrive at our office. We include these because we believe they were not part of the petitions you received last year. And like those delivered last year, we have placed them in a red binder.

Letter to MN Senators - "Seven Concerns"

The Minnesota legislature should not authorize the establishment of a medical decision-making bureaucracy in state government. We believe this legislation is a giant step toward state-approved health care rationing and government control of the practice of medicine. These proposals violate the rights of citizens and patients, interfere in the patient-doctor relationship, and are inconsistent with a free society.

Public Opposes State Collection of Private Medical Information

We gathered and in this report published the many public comments received by the Minnesota Department of Health's August 19, 2002 proposed rule to require most hospitals and health insurers to collect and electronically transmit individually-identifiable medical record data to the Department without patient consent: Proposed Permanent Rule Regarding Administrative Billing Data, Minnesota Rules, chapter 4653. The public was not pleased. The comments forced a public hearing.

"Distribution, Utilization, and Impact of the MinnesotaCare Provider Tax"

Taxing the Sick:  MinnesotaCare provider tax revenues have provided 78 percent, or $749.5 million, of the $960.4 million collected in the Health Care Access Fund since 1993. Health care providers have paid 51 percent of all provider taxes collected while payments from hospitals account for 33 percent. Of the $825.7 million collected in tax revenue, which includes a portion of cigarette taxes in 1992 and 1993, HMOs paid only $46.5 million through the gross premiums tax -- a total of 5.65 percent. 

EXIT INTERVIEW: David C. Anderson, M.D.

Certainly the reason to go to Arizona is not to make more money. My income will drop--maybe 30-40%. On the same hand the income factors in Minnesota are so driven by non-patient oriented mechanisms that my idealistic mind doesn't allow me to continue to practice that way.