MINNEAPOLIS, December 14, 2007 - House Republican Leader Marty Seifert unveiled a set of initiatives at a press conference Tuesday that favored a free market-based approach to providing health care in Minnesota.

At the press conference, the House Republicans put forward more than 20 broad health care reform ideas or directions that lacked specifics about how they would be implemented.

The House Republicans held the press conference in anticipation of expected proposals from the DFL.

A reform proposal by the DFL-led reform group, the Health Care Access Commission, co-chaired by Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, and Rep. Thomas Huntley, DFL-Duluth, will be released mid-January.

Because House Republicans are in the minority, “It is going to be difficult to get our offensive stuff passed, but we wanted to let people know we have some ideas,” said Seifert, R-Marshall.

Some of those include allowing Minnesotans to buy health insurance from any insurer in the country; giving individuals tax credits or tax deductions for insurance; and letting enrollees in state plans buy private insurance with vouchers, Seifert said.

Furthermore, he’d like to restructure the state’s safety net programs, such as MinnesotaCare away from being HMO plans, toward a benefit that would include health savings accounts with catastrophic coverage.

Other House Republican ideas include eliminating the provider tax and making up the lost revenues by holding the Department of Health and Human Services budget to a biennium increase equal to rate of inflation, he said. They’d also like to replace the current malpractice system with a tort court.

House Republicans will introduce a detailed reform bill in January, he said. 

On the defensive side, Seifert said the Republicans are particularly concerned about a DFL proposal to pass a constitutional amendment that would make health care a right and the prospect of the state adopting a government sponsored single payer health care system.

"Reform must ultimately rely on a market solution, not moving people into a state-sponsored program," Seifert said.