State Representative David Bly, MN District 25B » “Who’s Minding the Store?”

Early this week Sen. John Marty published a piece about the growing
concern about our inability to discern the cost of having private HMOs
manage our public health plans.  It followed the firing of David
Feinwachs, an attorney for the Minnesota Hospital Association.  He was
fired apparently because HMO’s applied pressure to push him out because
he was leading the effort to demand greater transparency.  So we as
taxpayers could better understand how our money was being spent.
…
I am glad there is some work being done on this. I had hoped to hit this
issue hard had I been re-elected. In an effort to address the growing
cost to our health care budget, in 2009 I did some looking into the cost
of having the private plans manage our public plans and invited the
official from Commerce to my office to ask him about his oversight of
the plans. He indicated there was nothing they could do to compel the
HMOs to open their books and didn’t have the man power to do justice to
the task even if they could. He also indicated that Health and Human
Services did not have the expertise to do even the most rudimentary
assessment of where our money was going.  He attempted to reassure me
that the plans do a good job and I shouldn’t worry.  He added that
because the private plans in Minnesota were non-profit that should allay
my concerns.  I asked him if he had evidence that showed that because
we had non-profit private plans in Minnesota we could be sure that the
cost of health care in Minnesota was far less than in other states.  But
he admitted he had none and did not believe evidence existed that would
show that.