Letter: Obama's health care plan will help us move forward

Talk about it

The Land Stewardship Project believes the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an important step forward for real health care reform for all Minnesotans, and we welcome the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that it is constitutional.

For the Land Stewardship Project, this court ruling is an important step for our farmer-members, especially for beginning farmers. Too often either the husband or the wife in the farming operation has to seek employment to obtain insurance coverage. This may impede the full development of that farming operation, especially if it is a livestock operation.

Now, children can stay on their parents’ health insurance policy until the age of 26. I wish we would have had this opportunity for our daughter Paula when she graduated from college. At the time, she did a six-month internship before getting a job, and we had to pay through the nose for her health care coverage because she had a preexisting condition.

ACA also makes it so insurance companies cannot deny coverage for preexisting conditions (this is now true for children and will be true for adults in 2014). There are those who like to diminish the ACA by calling it “Obamacare,” but facts are facts, and this new law is already helping thousands of Minnesotans. For example, under ACA anyone with insurance now can get preventive care and not have it charged against their deductible.

It is time for Minnesota to lead and fully implement the Affordable Care Act in a way that puts people first. We need legislators and legislative leadership to make sure the Minnesota Health Care Exchange is controlled by the people, not by big HMO corporations. The Health Care Exchange would provide funds to help buy down the insurance premium cost based upon one’s ability to pay.

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the ACA is constitutional, the remaining challenge is to see that average folks such as farmers, teachers, small business owners, etc. sit on Minnesota’s Health Care Exchange Board. The Board should not be controlled by the same insurance agents, brokers or representative of corporate HMOs whose unlimited profits have made health care so unaffordable and inaccessible for thousands of Minnesotans.

Tags: opinion, letters, healthcare, politics, minnesota