Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz again made a plea to Senate Republicans on Thursday to come to the table to negotiate a way to provide free insulin to those who can’t afford it.
Flanked by affordable insulin advocates at a press conference, the governor urged lawmakers to come together to create a plan that could pass through the divided Legislature during a special legislative session.
For months, lawmakers have grappled over a solution to provide free emergency access to insulin for people who need it. Democrats and Republicans have each put forth a proposal but they’ve not been able to bridge the gaps between the two plans.
Democrats want to allow Minnesotans with incomes up to 600 percent of the federal poverty guideline who don’t have insurance or whose insurance policy carries a deductible of $5,000 or more to access a 30-day supply of insulin. Diabetics in crisis could fill out forms at a pharmacy to prove they are eligible for the program and show a pharmacist an insulin prescription or out-of-date prescription to receive the drug.
Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed requiring insulin manufacturers to supply the drug to patients with diabetes who are not already on a public health program and that make less than 400 percent of the federal poverty line. That would come out to roughly a $50,000 cap for individuals or $100,000 for a family of four.
Under the GOP proposal, patients could fill out eligibility forms through the state’s MNsure health insurance exchange website, which they could then submit to their doctors to obtain a 120-day refillable supply of insulin. They could be eligible through the program for one year before they would have to requalify.
Earlier this month, Walz called on legislative leaders to appoint members to a committee to negotiate a compromise bill. House leaders and the governor appointed representatives, but Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, a Republican from Nisswa, said the effort was outside of the Legislature’s authority when members weren’t in session.
Walz called on Republicans to come to the table to talk through a compromise and also faulted Senate leaders for lacking the “political will” to meet sooner to merge the two bills.
“There’s one bottleneck and one reason that we’re not compromising and working out the differences and that’s the intransigence of Senate Republicans and unwillingness to talk about it,” Walz said.
Leaders in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives echoed Walz’s concerns and encouraged Senate Republicans to meet with them.
“Minnesotans need and deserve access to emergency insulin — which the Senate bill doesn’t provide,” House Speaker Melissa Hortman, D-Brooklyn Park, said in a statement. “We continue to wait for Senator Gazelka to name which senators will speak for the Senate in a workgroup so we can commence negotiations on a compromise.”
Gazelka on Twitter said he was ready to bring the Republican proposal to a vote if the governor called lawmakers into a special session, but didn’t mention Democrats’ plan or a compromise proposal. And bill authors for both proposals on Twitter expressed their interest in meeting to talk about a path forward.
It wasn’t immediately clear on Thursday morning whether a meeting would take place and if it had the support of Senate leadership.