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Braun vows to confront high health care costs

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INDIANAPOLIS — Anyone who has followed Gov. Mike Braun’s political trajectory over the past seven years knows the story of how he “solved” his company’s health care dilemma.

“We’ve got one of the highest health care costs of any state and some of the poorest health care outcomes,” Braun told me in October 2023 after giving me a tour of his company, Meyer Distributing of Jasper. “I fixed health care in my own business, have healthier employees, cut costs 15 years ago, created health care consumers out of my employees, and know some of the things I can do for coverage of our own state employees.”

Will that translate to 6.8 million Hoosiers? Can you take those fundamental building blocks on health coverage and bring them to the masses?

“Sure you can,” said Braun, who used the issue to defeat U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly in 2018 and then to capture the governor’s office last November. “That’s owning your own health care and well-being. That’s basically what I did here. I gave the best tools to my employees to do that. I put skin in the game on their minor health care to where they shop around for the small stuff, and they’ve got the best coverage when they get critically ill or have a bad accident.

“Insurance companies told me all of that,” Braun explained. “They were making so much money on our plan back then I decided to self-insure and basically solved health care as most companies would love to do, but had to be entrepreneurial. I just basically took what the insurance companies told me, saw how much money they were making covering my business, created it as a cost center and not a profit center and that’s how I fixed things.”

During his inaugural speech Monday morning at the Hilbert Circle Theatre, Indiana’s 52nd governor queued up the issue.

“At this crossroads, we face clear choices,” Gov. Braun said. “We can be the risk-takers and trailblazers that Hoosiers deserve in leadership or maintain the status quo. We can rest on our laurels as a great state to have a business or chart a new path like our pioneering predecessors to make Indiana the standard-bearer for small-business growth. I intend to do that.

“We can accept high health care costs as inevitable or take on the opaque system to lower costs and increase transparency for all Hoosier families,” Braun said, adding, “like I did in my own business 16 years ago.”

To bring this issue home, do a little personal research. Add up how much you are paying for insurance: health, home and possessions, auto and life. If your middle class like I am, I’ll bet is approaches 20% of your take-home pay. And with climate stoking up natural disasters that have gone from $20 billion annually to more than $100 billion, just about every American is going to face an insurance dilemma in the coming decade.

Beyond creating a self-insurance pool for the state’s 30,000 employees and, perhaps, scaling it up to cover 6.8 million Hoosiers, Braun will have to take on the dirty word for any governor, Republican or Democrat: “Medicaid.”

According to a white paper released by the Braun campaign, he intends to drive down Medicaid costs and improve the quality of health care “by allowing Medicaid patients to access program dollars to support a direct primary care practice membership, directing the Department of Health to collaborate with the Family and Social Services Administration to develop health literacy materials for the general public, and providing patients to access their data at no cost and investing in statewide medical record interoperability.”

Gloria Sachdev, who headed the Employer’s Forum of Indiana, was named by Gov. Braun as secretary of Health and Human Services (one of eight new cabinet positions in a new streamlined restructuring), while Mitch Roob returns as Family & Social Services Administration commissioner. Both are expected to address Medicaid spending. What is unclear is how they will interact with each other in Braun’s fledgling cabinet structure.

Gov. Braun ended his inaugural address with an aspirational tone.

“Undeterred by challenging periods throughout our history, Hoosiers have emerged stronger after every trial,” he said. “We have grown from the dirt roads of Vincennes into the Crossroads of America. From the farms to factories, our entrepreneurs have created thriving small businesses and some of the most important operations on Earth, supporting critical industries and the daily lives of American citizens. In the face of any challenge, Hoosiers have stepped up to take our state to unprecedented heights, and we’re not going to stop doing it.

“Today, we face a new crossroads,” Braun continued. “As the physical “Crossroads of America,’ Indiana is perfectly situated to lead our nation through the proverbial crossroads we now face. Let us listen to the entrepreneurial spirit that dwells within so many of us, the path of optimism to be pursued, so others may follow. I am committed to be a governor of not just words but action, as we create a prosperous future for all Hoosiers.

“It will take teamwork,” Braun said. “It will take partnership. It will take collaboration. This is why we should all feel a spirit of optimism. Now it’s time to get to work.”

 

Brian A. Howey is senior writer and columnist for Howey Politics Indiana/State Affairs. Find Howey on X @hwypol.


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