How does anything ever become fiscally viable?

Me too. I didn’t even have insurance til I got serious retinopathy in my late 50’s. A cluster eff where my husband broke his back, putting us on workman’s comp which doesn’t count as income in our state, allowed us to get Medicaid for me. Since then I live as if in a European country, health wise, but we have to get by on very little $. Still worth it. Now in our 70’s we grow and put up most of our food which helps a lot in all the ways.

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I grew up where the Mayo Clinic started, Rochester, MN. My dad was a surgeon there, and I got all my childhood medical care free there as a perk given to their physicians. Wow have things changed.
Picturing that vast marble complex as skating rinks and shopping malls is hilarious to me, or would be if it weren’t so very sad and stupid.

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They still do almost free healthcare for employees I think. But there’s huge housing problems down there, so I think some people work remote from the cities and drive down on an ‘as needed’ basis.

People I’ve spoken with around town think they are bluffing. What do you think?
It seems like they brought those threats to the table kinda late. Like, they waited until the Omnibus bill passed to contact the Governor. It’s hard to understand why they came so late to the table (very end of session). They own the entire hospital system in Southern MN. They must have gotten wind of this before then.

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Well, looking over the latest updates to the topic it looks like Mayo got a full exemption from the bill’s provisions. I read both sides arguments, and can see merit and potentialBS in each. You’d know better than I what such legislation would mean for a patient. One side says relief, the other, doom. :woman_shrugging: Time will tell, right?

Yeah, nobody ever really knows, for sure, the impact of passing or repealing legislation until it plays out on the street. Plus, people put through a LOT of medical legislation this session. It’s hard to even know what has happened.

The State of MN sued the insulin manufacturers (in 2018 in minnesota vs sanofi aventis) for ‘deceptive drug pricing’. I think that they lost that case because there’s no strong law against price fixing. California and a few other states are gonna try their luck. Some Mayo Docs helped advise the State on that and worked pretty hard on it. case records here We will see how it plays out in California, Kansas, Mississippi, and (i think) Kentucky). Attorney General Bonta Sues Nation's Largest Insulin Makers, Pharmacy Benefit Managers for Illegal Practices, Overcharging Patients | State of California - Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General

I think that MN passed some leg that that the hospital system cannot charge more for care at a hospital than the going rate at any clinic. That really impacts the Mayo. The State believes that current landscape is leading to hospital consolidation (which is leading to a lot of facilities closing their doors). I think there are several bills to try and address this in different ways. https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/minnesota-bill-targets-hospital-mergers-sanford-health-fairview-health-remain-committed-to-deal

At a Federal level, the word on the street is that the legislators want to regulate medicine like a public good (like a utility). But they don’t want to regulate the price of insulin, the price of epinephrine, the price of narcan, etc. all individually. They want one large piece of legislation that regulates everything at once. Tricky to figure out how to do that.

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Here’s a quick Federal summary that someone sent me.

DLC Board Insulin Update.pdf (213.3 KB)

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