Sen. Marty urges Minnesota bid for Amazon Headquarters to focus on health reform to save Amazon more than corporate subsidies while improving health
Saint Paul, Minn. – Citing Amazon’s statement that they seek “communities that think big and creatively,” Senator John Marty, DFL-Roseville, urged the group pulling together Minnesota’s bid for the Amazon HQ2 to focus on delivering universal health care. He said this “would save Amazon more than the corporate tax breaks likely to be offered by other states.”
“Minnesota should include, front and center in its bid, a commitment to adopting a universal health care system, such as the Minnesota Health Plan,” Marty wrote to Greater MSP and the Minnesota Department of Employment & Economic Development, the team pulling together a Minnesota bid. “It would ensure that all Amazon employees would have comprehensive cradle-to-grave care, including dental care…[it] would give every Amazon employee the ability to select the doctors, clinics, and providers of their choice and decisions about treatment would be made by people and their doctors, not by government or insurance companies.”
This offer could attract Amazon by giving them healthier, more productive employees while saving the company time and money through lower health care costs.
Citing economic studies in the U.S. and real world evidence from international comparisons, Sen. Marty said, “It is significantly less expensive to provide health care for everyone than it is to continue our dysfunctional health insurance system.”
Quoting Warren Buffett, Sen. Marty pointed out that health care costs consume 17 percent of the entire economy (much of which is paid by Amazon and other employers), far more than the two percent of the economy from corporate taxes.
“Best of all, every Minnesota family and business would get the same benefits,” Marty said. In contrast, bids that give “economic subsidies to individual businesses come at the expense of other businesses and individual taxpayers.”
A copy of Marty’s letter to Greater MSP and DEED is attached and can be found online here.
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