Johnson Says Dayton's 'Lying' Over Health Rates
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Minnesota-based PreferredOne had some of the lowest insurance rates in the country on the MNsure website, but abruptly dropped out in September.
Now, it's raising rates for some customers as much as 66 percent -- a jarring "market correction."
Larry Jacobs studies the federal health care law for the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.
"It's absolutely eye popping," Jacobs said.
He says PreferredOne gambled, and lost.
"They also just made a business decision that was just wrong," he said. "They misunderstood the market and they came in too low."
PreferredOne customers who go back to MNsure are facing sticker shock price hikes, and not the average 4.5 percent rate hike Gov. Mark Dayton is claiming.
At a press conference where he received a small business group endorsement, Republican governor candidate Jeff Johnson said Dayton is "lying."
"That 4.5 percent statistic is bogus. It's meaningless. It's nonsense. It was a blatant lie coming from the governor," Johnson said. "I believe the governor needs to apologize to the people of Minnesota for lying to us about the MNsure rates."
Gov. Dayton responded to Johnson after speaking to the state's largest teacher's union. And again, he claimed Minnesotans who use MNsure will see an average 4.5 percent rate hike when they buy insurance -- one of the lowest in the nation.
"Commissioner Johnson gets more desperate by the day, and so his rhetoric escalates," Dayton said.
He says the state did not include PreferredOne customers when it came up with the 4.5 percent average rate hike because PreferredOne is dropping out of MNsure next year.
Of the 55,000 people who got private insurance through MNsure last year, 33,000 of them went to PreferredOne -- and they're the ones getting rate hikes.