{"id":1824,"date":"2008-01-24T20:55:41","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T20:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1824"},"modified":"2008-01-24T20:55:41","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T20:55:41","slug":"old_habits_die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1824","title":{"rendered":"Old Habits Die Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a speech to a local chamber of commerce today, Governor Pawlenty remarked that Minnesota “is overemphasizing social services and welfare<\/a> at the expense of some
\nother key priorities, like K-12 education, like higher education, and
\nlike transportation.” While I don’t agree with his characterization that we are “overemphasizing” spending on health care and social services, those costs are beginning to crowd out our ability to increase spending in other key areas. In fact, we just discussed this in today’s session of the emerging leaders program in which I’m participating. The state demographer gave an excellent lecture on the dramatic shifts that are changing the face of Minnesota, including a rapidly aging population. By 2020, the number of Minnesotans age 65 and older will increase 53%. And a substantial number of aging boomers will need expensive medical care, pushing up our public health care costs. <\/p>\n

The governor was addressing a business crowd, an audience that is concerned with public investments that will boost worker productivity (like transportation and education spending). But I don’t think that’s an excuse to toss out a not-so-subtle dig at the people served by programs like MinnesotaCare. Besides, the lion’s share of rising health care costs can be attributed to the unprecedented aging of our population. What the governor should be advocating is a national solution that makes health care affordable for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a speech to a local chamber of commerce today, Governor Pawlenty remarked that Minnesota “is overemphasizing social services and welfare at the expense of some other key priorities, like K-12 education, like higher education, and like transportation.” While I don’t agree with his characterization that we are “overemphasizing” spending on health care and social […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-tq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}