If you’re a teacher who happens to get sick in the first year of the Dayton/ Education Minnesota Health Insurance Pool, good luck making a claim.
The new Health Insurance Pool that Dayton wants to start for Education Minnesota’s health insurance is, curiously, exempt from the startup balance requirements that affect every other insurance plan that operates in Minnesota. The plan could literally go bankrupt in the first year.
In the private market, this would be…well, illegal, since regular insurance plans need to have startup reserves. Since this is a Teachers Union things, it’d basically give Dayton the grounds for another deficit-boosting state bailout.
Meaning more spending.
Meaning more taxes.
Assuming the legislature in a post-Tea-Party, mid-Obamadescenscion era would pony up.
Sound good, teachers?
Coming up at 7AM: Why Does Dayton Hate Small Business People?
Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself! Find another howler? Leave it in the comments!
The philosophical fault line of the election is this: Dayton wants to make cosmetic changes in spending while continuing to operate under the assumtption that the vast majority of state government activities are necessary and vital. To that end he utilizes the populist fiction that the “rich” aren’t paying their “fair share.” He tries to label his tax strategy as a flat tax before admitting that the “rich” need to feel the bite of the levies. What I find most curious is his proposal to put the bucket of government under the spigot of casino revenue. If there ever was a regressive tax, taxing gambling qualifies. He doesn’t bother to explain the contradiction.
Emmer is in the position of having to say :”No,” which makes him vulnerable to the other populist chanting point: there will be dead bodies in the streets if government spending is cut. He has to confront Dayton’s lies and exaggerations while holding fast to the goal of tax reduction as a means of increasing wealth, which eventually will produce more tax revenue. But not for the sake of paying for the current wasteful government. Cuts have to be made and his thankless task as governor is to identify places to make them. I hope he has a thick enough skin to do it.