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Minnesota is facing a health care crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of families will see health insurance costs increase by 50 percent or more next year. Thousands more will lose their plan or access to their doctor through no fault of their own. Greater Minnesota will be hit especially hard; 45 counties — all outside the seven county Metro area — will have just two insurers offering health plans.

Irresponsible enrollment caps approved by Gov. Mark Dayton’s Department of Commerce mean many Minnesotans will effectively have just one option. This creates difficult choices for Minnesota families: race through a broken MNsure website, spending hours on the phone seeking help from a dysfunctional call center in Illinois, while trying to enroll before one plan meets its cap, or wait and enroll in an uncapped narrow network plan with a 67 percent premium increase.

An even tougher choice: enroll in a plan that will eat up your family’s budget, or go with lesser or no coverage and pay a steep federal penalty — a minimum fine of $2,000 for a family of four.

How did we get here? How is it that the individual and family insurance market, which has withstood decades of changes in healthcare delivery and utilization, stands at the brink of collapse just a few short years after relative financial health?