Three weeks ago, Speaker Kurt Daudt highlighted a farming family whose health insurance premiums were literally doubling. That’s when Minnesota got introduced to David and Ann Buck. This WCCO-TV article quotes Ann Buck as saying “This is a crisis. There will be people on Jan. 1 who will not be insured.” She’s right. Unfortunately, that’s only part of Minnesota’s MNsure crisis.
Later in the article, WCCO reports that “The Bucks are among those who got cancellation notices from Blue Cross effective Dec. 31. They currently pay $1,600 a month in premiums with a $13,000 deductible for their family of four. They have been told next year their monthly premiums will jump to $3,300 a month with the same deductible. That would mean $40,000 in premiums, something the Bucks say they cannot afford.”
The good news for the Buck family is that Republicans and Democrats agree there needs to be a short-term fix for the Bucks and other families trapped in the same crisis. The bad news for the Buck family is that they never should’ve been put into this position. Now the Bucks are providing the DFL with a little well-deserved retribution:
Here’s the transcript of the Bucks’ ad:
DAVID BUCK: We run a family business on a tight budget.
ANN BUCK: The Democrats promised lower health care costs and that did not happen. Health care costs are soaring and families just can’t afford the premiums.
DAVID: Our rates are going up to $3,300 a month, $40,000 a year — $40,000 a year.
ANN: It’s insanity.
DAVID: Democrats got us into this mess with MNsure.
ANN: If we don’t vote against Democrats, we’re just going to get more of the same.
The truth is that the DFL created this crisis because they put a higher priority on achieving an ideological victory than they put on doing the right thing.
Technorati: Ann Buck, David Buck, Health Insurance, Insurance Premiums, Deductibles, Health Care Crisis, Paul Thissen, Mark Dayton, DFL, Election 2016
Well, in defense of the DFL, you must admit they have absolutely NO idea of what “the right thing” is.
This is the couple that runs Buck’s Unlimited, one of the biggest corporate dairy farms in Minnesota.
David’s the vice president of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association. He and Ann and his brothers and son DJ are all big wheels in the Minnesota dairy world.
They are not the small mom and pop farmers they are made out to be. They’re not eligible for the MNsure tax subsidy because they make much more than the $97,000 a year cutoff. Most dairy farms are less than 80 acres; Buck’s Unlimited LLC is over ten times that, with 907 acres on four separate farms.
They don’t own any of the 907 acres on which they operate, which not only saves them from paying any real estate tax, they get to write off their rent payments on their Federal and state taxes! On top of that, David Buck has received over $600,000 in subsidies from the Federal government since 1995. (His brothers and son DJ have also got six figures worth of free money from the government.)
Thank Ted Cruz, he removed the money that was in the affordable health care law. That money was in there to help the insurance companies to absorb loss due to the increase in people that had pushed of services, because they were not affordable. The Buck family detectable is like 24% of a typical person in MN yearly earning (the Bucks must be better off to be able to risk the paying of that large of deductible. So why are they crying when the person in Remer, Togo, Big Fork, etc would never risk having a 13000 bill in a single year…..
Wake up … Wake up … …
I hope we get to single payer before I am born and have to pay insurance companies their blood money. I see that a birth in 1955 at Crosby Miner Hospitable cost parents (with no insurance at all) less than $25.00.
Get the insurance companies out of needed heath care. They can cover “plastic surgery” when it is not needed to reconstruct features after an accident or birth defect.
Actually, it was Sen. Rubio who removed the insurance company bailouts. As for single-payer, why would anyone think that Democrats are good at running anything? Just look at Detroit & tell me that they know how to run anything.
Why should it matter if a family is making $10,000 or $1,000,000 a year, Obamacare/MNSure is a financial disaster for the buyers and the Nation/State as a whole. The poor can’t afford it so we subsidize them to buy it and they still can’t afford to go to the doctor due to high deductibles. Get government and their mandates out of the way so people can buy what they want, not what some Washington/Minnesotan bureaucrats say you need.
Also, who has received more subsides since 1995, a welfare recipient living off the government or a farmer living by the rules set forth by the government? I don’t like either getting subsidized but at least the farmer produces something of worth whereas the welfare recipient only produces more need for welfare.