Jeff Johnson: Competition, not a government monopoly, is the best way to bring health care costs down

Health care is essential. That's why the special interests supporting Tim Walz are falsely accusing me of wanting to take it away from Minnesotans with pre-existing conditions. They know it's a lie, but it's been said a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

Minnesotans with pre-existing conditions have been protected from discrimination for decades — as they should be — and that will continue when I become governor.

I have been clear about my health care priorities from the beginning: ensure Minnesotans have access to affordable health insurance that meets their needs. Like you, I have friends, family, and members of my church who rely on health insurance to cover pre-existing conditions. There is no way I would abandon them.

We have to drive health insurance costs down, and the only sure way to do that is get more competition in the marketplace. The best health insurance in the world is useless if you can't afford it.

Prices for health insurance for many people have doubled under Gov. Mark Dayton, and that's because competition has been driven out of the market. Many Minnesotans have no health care choice at all — only one company sells insurance in their market.

The Democrats' plan has created expensive monopolies, and that's why, for the first time in years, fewer people are buying insurance. Dayton himself admitted the "Affordable Care Act" was no longer affordable for many Minnesotans.

My opponent Tim Walz voted for Obamacare and now pushes for a complete government takeover of the health care system known as "single payer." His plans will require hospitals to survive with a much smaller portion of privately insured patients, forcing many of them out of business. Hospitals receive less than half the reimbursement amounts for public programs than they do from private insurance.

Just last week, the state health care bureaucracy got hacked and 21,000 Minnesotans had their personal data compromised. Handing our entire health care system over to a state government that can't even deliver our car tabs on time is not the direction we should be moving.

There is no "one-size-fits-all" plan that works for everybody, no matter what people promise. Yet if we have a government takeover of health care, choice and competition will be driven out of the system. And without choice and competition, all semblance of accountability will go, too. Monopolies don't have to care about their customers.

The Japanese have a proverb: "Nothing is more expensive than something that is free."

Tim Walz is promising free universal health coverage. It sounds like a great idea — until we all start paying the price.

Instead, let's make sure we are taking care of those who need help and bringing more competition and choice into the system for everyone else.