In 2017, Alec Smith turned 26, aging out of the Obamacare rule that he could get his health insurance through his parents’ policy.
He had Type 1 diabetes and needed insulin to manage it. But he didn’t have the money for a high deductible plan. He also didn’t have the $1,300 he needed each month to pay for insulin out of pocket. So he tried to ration it until his next paycheck. He would end up dying a month later.
This session, the Minnesota House passed the Alec Smith Emergency Insulin Act, which would levy a fee on pharmaceutical manufacturers to pay for emergency supplies of insulin for people who couldn’t afford it. Its success was short-lived. It died in the final moments courtesy of the Republican-controlled Senate, with 33 senators voting in favor and 34 against.
It was a surprising demise for a bill that originally had bipartisan support. Some lawmakers have been calling it a mere omission or oversight in the eleventh hour of the special session. In a debrief last week, Sen. Karin Housley (R-St. Mary’s Point) called the incident a “debacle” and “disappointing.”
View the complete June 4 article by Hannah Jones on The CityPages website here.
