Bluff Country: Brownsville, Minnesota

     After graduating from high school,  I moved from my hometown of Brownsville, Minnesota, up to the Twin Cities.  I    applied  at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and began to work at Target in Forest Lake.  I lived with my  relatives in  Stacy, Minnesota  for the  entire year but recently moved back to my hometown. It is exciting to be back in this very small town (only 500 people; give or take a few), and I am enjoying the ‘small town’ vibe once again.

       After being away from the area that I grew up in and rarely ever left, it is exciting to be looking at my hometown in a different perceptive. Now that I have been given the task to go out into communities, especially ones that I am familiar with and talk with community leaders, I am thrilled to learn more about Brownsville and the leaders within the city. Because the town is pretty small, not a lot of huge issues occur. Most of the activity regarding the town happens during city council meetings or Houston County meetings. Brownsville's ‘political’ leaders are:

     * Tim Serres (Mayor)
     * Chris Dvorak, Joe Serres, Craig Steger, and Rick Voshart

       (city council members)

     *Michael J. Moriarty (City Clerk)

    

    Rick Voshart has been on the city council for many years, and has been one of the active members at Brownsville City Council Meetings. Of course, there are only a handful of people at these meetings each month. During these once a month meetings, they discuss city expenses (fixing city buildings, building or repairing the city’s water treatment facility, and so on). If you would be interested to read the City Council Minutes, it gives you an overview of last months meeting and subsequent months this year.

    

     Here is an example of how little or major decisions fluctuate each month for the City of Brownsville: Last month for example, topics ranged from the Lions Club idea to fix the baseball diamond’s bathrooms into a storage shed, maintenance repairs around town, and a follow up on the fire department’s tasks (checking the warning siren, for example). This may be of little concern to the everyday citizen in my hometown.

    

    But on the other hand, according to Rick Voshart (a city council member), big decisions have and still need to be discussed in upcoming meetings. I asked Voshart what the current issues are and he gave me some current issues being discussed within the town.
      

     The City Council is discussing whether or not to install walk in showers in the senior only apartments that the city owns. At the moment, all of the apartments have bath tubs, but can be very difficult for less mobile seniors to get in and out safely. The proposal would be very expensive—at least 600 dollars for each room. The people who live in the apartments are split on the issue; some may want a tub while others may want a shower. Obviously, this proposal would be a big expense for this small town that would either have to come from tax money or Houston County funds.   

     Even though this issue may not affect everyone in Brownsville, the families and tenants in these apartments find this proposal very important. Voshart also said that preparing for winter (getting the plow and sand truck ready) is of great importance at the moment as well. If the equipment is damaged or not working correctly, action will need to be taken soon.

    

     I was quite surprised how the simplest of expenses in the city (cleaning up brush around the Community Center, for example) has to be proposed and passed by the city council. Voshart, along with the rest of the city council, help insure that the issues the citizens of Brownsville are experiencing get taken care of or get acknowledged for future decisions.

Health Care or Health Scare

 

     Insurance companies, along with pharmaceutical companies, receive large profits each year by basically denying countless Americans coverage or cheaper health care options. Many Americans don’t have health insurance and choose not to go to the doctor because of the expense.

 

     During my childhood I can only think of one
time I had to go to the hospital. My mother
always told me, “Unless you are dying, I am not taking you to the doctor!”. This very rare trip to the hospital was for my tonsil removal surgery. My tonsils were so large that they protruded far into my throat causing me to choke on food. Obviously, this was affecting my daily life, so my mother decided to schedule the $3,000 to $4,000 surgery.

                         

     All of it was covered by my mother's health insurance at that time. You may be saying to yourself: “You had your whole surgery covered, what is the issue with health care/insurance?” Luckily, my mother was poor enough to be able to receive a Minnesota health insurance called UCare. UCare covered the. entire costs because we were unable to pay for such an expensive surgery.

 

     This scenario is a superb example of how great of a service health insurance companies can offer to the American people. But insurance companies are much more of a 'business' than a service. In my opinion, if one is paying a monthly bill to cover health care costs, the company should not be able to deny payment for any reason. A tactic for insurance companies to gain more revenue and decrease costumer coverage is provided by the Verden Report (2007):

 

Insurance Companies Decrease Their Medical Cost Ratio:

 

     Medical Cost Ratio (MCR) is the percentage of costumer insurance premiums that are spent for health services. According to this report, UnitedHealth Group in 2007 had received $16,984,000,000 in three quarters. In their first quarter for 2007 they had a 82.7% MCR. They spent almost 83% of their premiums on health services received by their costumers. But this is when things get interesting—they only spent 79.5% of their total premiums during their 3rd quarter. This 3.2% percentage change may not seem like a lot, but it saved the company more than a half billion dollars! This money could have been spent to pay for life saving operations, medications, and other services.

      The Verden Report has many more elements regarding the “Cost versus Profit” of health insurance companies. I highly suggest you check it out; it is a very eye-opening read!

 

What I Think Must Change
 

     In my opinion, the biggest things that need to change to make our health system more convenient, affordable, and run by ethics is:

Provide a health care plan for people who can't afford insurance company premiums (the government health care plan, for example). Insurance companies have to provide a service to the American people, and operate more as a non-profit company than a mega-money-maker.

 

     In retrospect, my family was lucky to be poor enough for a government provided health care plan where we had to pay very little out of pocket for our health services. On the other hand, wealthier Americans have to purchase high priced insurance and hope that some of their medical bills will be covered.

 

     Should we really be paying top dollar for a service that we hope will help us when we need them the most?

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