Al Franken's Blog, page 74
April 24, 2012
The Forum: Franken: Health act good for Minnesota
It has been two years since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, and even though it won’t be fully implemented until 2014, millions of Americans and Minnesotans are already enjoying benefits from important provisions in the law.
For example, no child in American can now be denied health insurance coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition. Parents across Minnesota and around the country can sleep a little bit easier knowing that if their child gets sick, they’ll still be able to get the health care coverage they need.
And speaking of parents, young adults can now stay on their parents’ health insurance policy until they’re 26. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 32,189 young adults in Minnesota are now insured on their parents’ policy.
The act also benefits seniors. I go to a lot of senior centers around the state. And because of the health care law, more than 57,000 seniors in Minnesota received a 50 percent discount on their covered brand-name prescription drugs when they hit the doughnut hole, at an average savings of $590 dollars per person. By 2020, the law will close the doughnut hole entirely.
I could go on and on with what we’ve already gained. But I want to talk a little about a provision I wrote, with the catchy name “medical loss ratio,” which is sometimes called the 80-20 rule. Because of my medical loss ratio provision, which I based on a Minnesota state law, health insurance companies must spend 80 to 85 percent of their premiums on actual health care. Not on administrative costs, not marketing, not CEO salaries, not profits.
And we’ve already heard that the medical loss ratio is working – plans are already lowering premiums in order to comply with the law. For example, Aetna in Connecticut lowered their premiums an average of 10 percent because of this provision in the law.
Another key provision in the law is the value index. The value index rewards doctors for the quality of the care they deliver, not the quantity of care. Minnesota is the leader in delivering high-value health care at a relatively low cost. And traditionally, we have been woefully under-reimbursed for it. For example, Texas gets reimbursed about 50 percent more per Medicare patient than Minnesota, even though they often get worse results.
Now this isn’t about pitting Minnesota against Texas or Florida – it’s about rewarding those states to become more like Minnesota. Imagine if we brought Medicare expenditures down by 30 percent around the country. It will bring enormous benefits – not just to Minnesota but across the country, because it will bring down the cost of health care delivery nationwide. And we all know that bringing down health care costs is key to getting our long-term deficits under control.
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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April 16, 2012
KEYC: Franken’s Push To Get Farm Bill Passed In Congress
In an effort to gain ideas from farmers and rural business owners, Sen. Al Franken discussed his work to cut energy costs at a Rural Energy Forum in Mankato.
Updates us on the status of the Farm Bill and Franken’s push to get it passed by Congress.
State Director of the USDA Rural Development Colleen Landkamer expressed her enthusiasm after today’s forum on reducing rural energy costs.
State Director of the USDA Rural Development Colleen Landkamer says, “Using our own energy as opposed to importing from other places, growing our own, making rural communities strong, sustainable and you can do that with renewable energy. It also cuts costs dramatically.”
She says rural regions in the state make the renewable energy business stronger. Sen. Franken believes a strong farm economy is key to Minnesota’s economic vitality and that the 2012 Farm Bill will be critically important to farmers and rural communities across the state.
Sen. Al Franken says, “The bill should be passed in 2012 it’s scheduled to be otherwise you would have to be an extension.”
Read the whole article and watch the video »
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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Minnesota Daily: Officials listen to students
It was encouraging to see that several public officials came to the University of Minnesota campus Monday to listen to students’ experiences with paying tuition and incurring debt.
U.S. Sen. Al Franken, Gov. Mark Dayton and Office of Higher Education director Larry Pogemiller joined University President Eric Kaler on Monday to talk about college affordability and how state and federal aid aren’t keeping up with tuition increases. This is good news for students, because the more lawmakers we have thinking and talking about the price of higher education, the greater the chances that someone will do something about it.
The key to these lawmakers understanding the true burden of attending college right now is to stop assuming they can relate and start listening to current students. The average University student left school last year with $27,000 in loan debt — a number other generations never had to deal with because tuition was lower and federal and state grants and scholarships covered a greater percentage of tuition.
We need more officials to take up the issue of unaffordable education. We need the administration to be held accountable for wasteful spending and to find innovative ways to bring down the cost of tuition. We need the state to care more about taking the burden off of students when it comes to higher education and care less about making political statements through cuts. If we want this state to pick itself up after the recession, we must invest in education.
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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Post-Bulletin: Editorial: Students’ debt is nearing a tipping point
Youth is a wonderful thing, but those of us who sometimes look back wistfully upon early adulthood have at least one reason to be glad that we’re a bit further along in our life’s journey.
Consider the dilemma for today’s high school graduates. Twenty or 30 years ago, a bachelor’s degree was a relatively affordable commodity, especially at public colleges and universities. And for anyone with the degree in hand, the job market was strong.
Things have changed. Since 1985, tuition and fees at U.S. colleges and universities have risen an average of 498 percent — nearly five times the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, the federal Pell Grants that make college possible for the nation’s poorest young people haven’t come close to keeping up. For next year’s freshman, the maximum grant of $5,645 will cover just one-third of the the average costs. The GOP’s latest budget proposal by Rep. Paul Ryan would hit Pell Grants even harder, cutting $170 billion from the program over the next decade, with one million students losing their grant entirely.
And here’s the kicker: According to the latest numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for 2010 college graduates is 9.1 percent — an all-time high.
So, is a college education still worth the investment?
We think so, but if we’re not approaching a tipping point in that equation, we certainly can see it from where we’re standing, especially in Minnesota. We’re accustomed to seeing ourselves at or near the top of educational rankings, but here are a couple that shouldn’t be points of pride:
• In a state-by-state ranking of college graduates’ student loan debt, Minnesota’s class of 2010 ranked fourth. Students who borrowed money to our attend public or not-for-profit schools began the next chapter of their lives with a $29,058 burden on their backs.
• 71 percent of Minnesota undergraduates are borrowing money to attend college — a rate that’s exceeded only in Iowa, Maine and New Hampshire.
During the past several years, we’ve often editorialized about the need for high school students to be informed about their post-secondary educational options. Not every high school graduate is ready to pursue a bachelor’s degree, and there are good jobs available to people who receive the proper training at trade schools or technical programs.
But students who have the ability and the desire to pursue a college degree shouldn’t have to mortgage their futures to obtain it. Some level of student loan debt is acceptable, but when well-employed college graduates are paying off that debt in their mid-40s, something needs to change.
Unfortunately, the change that’s coming might be for the worse. Federal legislation that in 2007 capped the interest rate on federal student loans at 3.4 percent is about to expire, which means the rate could double, to 6.8 percent. Sen. Al Franken is co-sponsoring a bill to extend the rate cut, but it faces opposition from Republicans who say it’s costing the government nearly $6 billion per year.
In a country that recently spent hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the auto industry and keep Wall Street from imploding, we’re dumbfounded at the notion that we’d now choose to dump more debt onto the shoulders of our best and brightest young people.
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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Star Tribune: Franken says U.S. can improve medical device approval process while ensuring safety
The United States does not have to choose between the vitality of its medical device industry or the health of its people, U.S. Sen. Al Franken said in an interview at the Design of Medical Devices Conference hosted by the University of Minnesota. It is possible to improve both.
By bringing regulators and manufacturers together to communicate and find common ground, he said, they can find a way to get life-saving devices to market faster while not compromising patient safety. “To some degree, there is a false choice there,” said Franken, who is a member of the Senate Health Committee.
While acknowledging that the range of issues involved are “pretty complex stuff,” Franken pointed to his efforts to bring Jeffrey Shuren, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to Minnesota to meet with leaders of the medical device industry.
Those meetings subsequently led to an agreement between the FDA and the industry to develop a Regulatory Sciences Partnership that will be centered in Minnesota. The idea is to help two very different cultures – regulatory and manufacturing – find common ground to improve the system while enhancing safety.
“These people better start talking to each other,” Franken said of any hoped-for improvements in the American device-approval system. “I want to be a bridge there.”
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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Equal Pay Day
It’s incredible to think that, in the year 2012, we still live in a country where women get paid less than men for the same work.
That’s what Equal Pay Day is meant to symbolize. To earn what men did in 2011 alone, women would have had to keep working all the way until today — an extra four and a half months.
This is, of course, profoundly unfair. And it boggles my mind that some people are willing to ignore this injustice — not to mention its consequences. After all, if you’re a single mother, equal pay isn’t just about your rights as a woman — it’s about your ability to provide for your family.
The same thing happened during the recent fight over birth control, when a lot of politicians proved that they don’t know how contraception works or how expensive it can be. That fight was about both a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions and her ability to stay well without having to pay $100 or more every month for contraception.
I always think that future generations will look back and wonder how we let so much inequality happen in this country for so long. And it makes me remember that this generation has a duty to erase as much of it as we can while we’re here.
So, today, in honor of Equal Pay Day, make sure to have at least one conversation with a friend or co-worker about the fight we’re waging. Maybe you could Tweet about it (#EqualPay Day) or post it on Facebook . Whatever you do, remember that your work really does make a difference when it comes to making our economy — and our country — more fair and equal.
Thanks for all you do,
Al
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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April 6, 2012
Huffington Post: Al Franken Has ‘People In Stock Photos’ Fundraising For Him
Candidates often send out fundraising solicitations from their family, prominent political figures or regular citizens who are just so excited about the campaign that they need to help out. But on Friday, Sen. Al Franken’s (D-Minn.) campaign tried someone new: Woman Picking Out Fruit In Supermarket, who is co-chair of People in Stock Photos for Franken (PSPF).
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© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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Huffington Post: Al Franken Has 'People In Stock Photos' Fundraising For Him
Candidates often send out fundraising solicitations from their family, prominent political figures or regular citizens who are just so excited about the campaign that they need to help out. But on Friday, Sen. Al Franken's (D-Minn.) campaign tried someone new: Woman Picking Out Fruit In Supermarket, who is co-chair of People in Stock Photos for Franken (PSPF).
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Read the rest of Huffington Post: Al Franken Has 'People In Stock Photos' Fundraising For Him
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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April 5, 2012
KAAL: Red Bulls Coming Home After Completed Mission
The National Guard says nearly 3,000 soldiers are scheduled to return to Minnesota, over the next 3 weeks.
Nearly one year ago, hundreds of families from across southeast Minnesota said goodbye to their soldiers, at a sendoff ceremony in Rochester in May, 2011.
"You are second to none and you make the state proud, you make the state proud," said Minnesota Senator Al Franken, during that ceremony.
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© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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April 4, 2012
Star Tribune: Wounded Cook County prosecutor discusses courthouse security firsthand
Franken, a Democrat, touted his Local Courthouse Safety Act, which has bipartisan support and would allow local courts to use excess federal security equipment such as metal detectors, wands and baggage screening machines.
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Read the rest of Star Tribune: Wounded Cook County prosecutor discusses courthouse security firsthand
© Al Franken - U.S. Senator, Minnesota, 2012. |
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