Countdown at Legislature, health, liquor tax

By Joe Spear
Free Press Editor

House Speaker Margaret Anderson-Kelliher told reporters in a Thursday morning conference call she was confident DFLers and the governor would come to a budget solution before the end of the session on Monday.

That may have been the most surprising news coming out of the conference call between state reporters and editors and Kelliher and House Majority Leader Tony Sertich.

Second most important: House-Senate Health and Human Services bill to fix health care funding for the poor was sent to governor by an important midnight Wednesday deadline, requiring him to sign of veto by Saturday. And though all expectations are that the governor will veto, there was strong suggestion that a compromise would be worked out there as well.

The HHS bill doesn't have direct implications for helping solve the budget but it may have indirect implications.

It is aimed at putting assessments and/or surcharges on health care providers so $188 million in state money can be leveraged to get $1.4 billion in federal money through early enrollment in Medicaid for the state under new federal health care legislation.

The governor does not appear to be opposing this in huge, public ways, which leads us to believe he will accept the major premises of it.

This will solve the problem of the GAMC fix passed earlier that was a good  bipartisan compromise, but cut payments to hospitals so much, many, including ISJ Mankato, said they would not be able to participate.

Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, was on the conference committee that sent the bill to the governor. She sees the early option for moving GAMC people over to Medicaid a big success.

While hospitals pay a surcharge to leverage this money, the Minnesota Hospital Association favored it because they know it will bring them a better reimbursement rate with federal money than they were going to get with the state GAMC.

Sheran also seems to hold out hope that the Mankato mental health crisis center that had to close on April 30 in Mankato may be re-opened, or its funding may in some way be saved.

Speaker Kelliher said the HHS bill will cover 39,000 people on GAMC plus about 43,000 people on MinnesotaCare all the while leveraging $1.4 billion in federal money. Sheran noted the shift will also help hospitals rehire or employ some 20,000 workers.

Pawlenty told the StarTribune the bill was problematic because it would cost the state $900 million. DFLers assessed the cost at about $200 million.

DFLers have said the earlier GAMC bill favored metro hospitals at the expense of rural hospitals, a key reason Sheran did not vote for the earlier compromise.

Finally, the Strib quoted Rep. Bob Gunther, R-Fairmont, saying he might be open to a liquor tax to help balance the budget, and House leader Sertich suggested there may be other Republicans in the House willing to consider that in light of the dire need to put the state's fiscal House in order.

As always, stay tuned.