BAXTER - GOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson said Friday the loss of Preferred One, MNsure's largest health insurance provider, is more than a "hiccup" as the MNsure board chair described it.
"It's huge to thousands of Minnesotans," he said after a fundraiser involving Republican House District 10A candidate Josh Heintzeman at the Holiday Inn Express.
Preferred One, which generally offered lower premiums, had signed up nearly 6 in 10 consumers who purchased plans on the MNsure exchange.
The Hennepin County commissioner said Minnesotans were better off before MNsure and Obamacare and outlined the steps he would to take to remedy the situation. He said he'd ask the federal government for a waiver from the national law, while admitting that obtaining it would be a challenge. His next step, he said, would be to fire the board and the top staff of MNsure.
"This has been nothing but a disaster from Day One," he said.
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Johnson, 47, called for the state's legislative auditor to expand his current MNsure audits to include the role the Dayton administration may have played in setting the health insurance rates offered by Preferred One on MNsure. He said he hasn't received any evidence indicating the Dayton administration played a role in the setting of the insurance rates but he believed an expansion of the investigation is warranted.
He said that while Obamacare is bad idea, it's the existing law and efforts to improve MNsure must be made. Johnson said he would encourage the board to offer more options by lessening the number of requirements that must be met in order to offer a health insurance policy.
Johnson conducted interviews with the media after the Heintzeman fundraiser and before an afternoon fundraiser with Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Lake Shore, at Gull Dam Brewing in Nisswa.
Speaking on Friday - with 46 days until the general election - the Republican candidate didn't appear fazed with polls that showed Gov. Mark Dayton with a lead and with 100 percent name recognition. In contrast, Johnson's statewide name recognition was 63 percent.
"The campaign starts, essentially, the day after Labor Day," Johnson said.
Johnson's actual campaign started 16 months ago. Most of the polls he's seen, Johnson said, place the governor's lead in the single digits, with the governor securing the support of about 45 percent. The fact that Dayton, a well known entity, hasn't hit the 50 percent mark in most polls represents a spot of daylight to Johnson.
"There's a hole in there for me to run through," he predicted.
Johnson said while negative ads aimed at him have been airing, his own general election television ads won't begin airing until next week.
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As he tours the state Johnson is emphasizing that he wants to make Minnesota a more inviting place for business by improving the state's tax and regulatory climate. The state has a high percentage of workers who are underemployed, working (not by choice) at jobs in which their qualifications exceed those that are needed for the position they're in, Johnson said. And while Minnesota's unemployment numbers are lower than the U.S. numbers, many of those positions are lower wage jobs.
"Not careers that keep people in Minnesota," he said of the jobs.
If elected he pledged to start a statewide system of audits that would measure the effectiveness of government programs. The goal is not to necessarily seek out fraud and waste, he said, but to determine whether a program is actually working or not.
"My goal is to start auditing programs one at a time," he said.
He objects to what he sees as a lowering of standards by the elimination of the basic skills test for kindergarten-12th grade students. He also deplored the achievement gap that exists between white students and students of color.
While he wouldn't reverse the recently passed state law mandating all day, every day kindergarten he said he would have preferred to have given school districts more leeway in how they would have spent the additional money.
Responding to a question about Enbridge's proposed Sandpiper pipeline route through northern Minnesota, Johnson said the would like to see the project move forward.
"The route doesn't matter to me," he said.
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He said transporting oil through a pipeline was safer than moving it by rail and he suggested the regulatory process was trying to slow down or stop the project entirely.
"I'm an advocate for getting it done," he said.
Asked specifically about the proposed northern route, Johnson said, "I would be comfortable with that."
In 2000, he was elected to the Minnesota Legislature, where he served for six years. He was elected assistant majority leader and served as chairman of the Civil Law and Election Committee and the House Republican Steering Committee. In 2008 he was elected to the Hennepin County Board. He ran unopposed for re-election to the board in 2012.
Johnson and his wife Sondi are the parents to two boys. His website biography stated that he has coached youth football, baseball and soccer (16 teams in all in the past 12 years).
A resident of Plymouth for the last 20 years, Johnson grew up in Detroit Lakes and his wife grew up in Crookston. He attended Concordia College and received his law degree from Georgetown Law School.
"I do believe greater Minnesota, in some ways, has been forgotten," Johnson said, a point accentuated by Dayton's choice of another Minneapolis resident as his running mate.
MIKE O'ROURKE may be reached at 855-5860 or mike.orourke@brainerddispatch.com . Follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MikeORourkenews .
