To the editor:

Whether you are rich or poor, everyone has inherent worth and value as a human being. Unfortunately not everyone seems to take this to heart, as a program that has been providing essential health care services for more than 1 million Minnesotans is at risk. We can engage heads and hearts and work toward meeting everyone’s basic needs.

Progress toward this goal, however, will be very difficult if we do not fund the Health Care Access Fund as we have been doing for the last 27 years. This is not about a new fee or as some legislators like to imply a new tax, but just continues the Minnesota’s legislator long term financial commitment to stable healthcare funding.

The Health Care Access Fund provides critical funding to Medicaid, MinnesotaCare and other public health investments. It is a 2 percent tax on providers, which is also an investment with a return that helps support these essential public services If lawmakers don’t act to repeal the sunset of the Health Care Access Fund, it will leave a 1.3 billion dollar hole in our state budget. We live in rural communities which will be negatively impacted by a loss of funding of the provider tax.

Every other state except Alaska has a provider tax. Our representative and senators need to know we do not want the Health Care Access Fund repealed. In Minnesota we care for each other.

Roma Kindschi

Marshall