Brown is trading the U.S. Senate for the Indiana State House. He has made reducing health care costs for Hoosiers a top priority.
INDIANAPOLIS — Gov.-elect Mike Brown is clarifying the challenges he wants to address in his new role as Indiana's next governor.
Brown calls it “a bold vision for Indiana's future.”
Indiana's new governor has laid out several priorities that are part of what he calls his “Freedom and Opportunity Agenda.” These priorities include addressing property taxes and streamlining state government.
Another priority is addressing health care costs for Hoosiers.
Brown said he wants to invest in a healthier Indiana.
“We're going to encourage employers to adopt plans that focus on health and prevention,” Brown said in a Zoom interview this week.
It's an approach the new governor said he and his staff adopted 16 years ago to bring down health care costs by creating their own projects.
“We don't pay attention to diet and lifestyle and simple profiles like, 'How's my health?' and we try to encourage Hoosiers to become stewards of their own plants and equipment. Please,” Brown explained.
This is not the first time the governor-elect has addressed health care costs. He worked on this issue as a state representative and U.S. senator.
Brown, a longtime business owner, has frequently said he intends to take an entrepreneurial approach in his role as governor and run the state like a business.
For Hoosiers who get insurance through their employers, the state has little control over those plans.
Health care costs could still be affected through several measures proposed by the new governor, including stronger price transparency requirements, increased regulation of pharmacy benefit managers, and reform of the licensing process.
“If it's such a routine thing, why does it have to go through administration to give prior approval?” Brown asked. “If it's going to be a complicated and expensive treatment, use common sense.”
The governor-elect's agenda also emphasizes continuing coverage for pre-existing conditions and reforming mental health treatment in hopes of reducing the burden on the criminal justice system.
Another topic for the new governor is medical care in rural areas.
Brown said he wants to expand rural health care through new incentives for rural health facilities, expand telehealth coverage and improve access to prenatal care.
He also said he wanted to look at Indiana's hospital system in its entirety, likening it to an unregulated public utility and calling it anticompetitive.
Brown did not say whether he would seek regulatory changes, but suggested he would rely on the hospital system itself to address the need for more health care opportunities in rural areas of the state.
“I would like to see the state government become too overbearing and set the conditions and look at the system itself without creating incentives. “I don't think you can get into that. Very few companies have been able to expand beyond their local market,” Brown said. “I look at what a small number of them have actually done to expand their coverage, consider whether we can further encourage or incentivize that in other parts of the state, and then look at the larger We look at how the system can help them as well.”
Regarding the rise in Medicaid costs in Indiana, Brown said he wants to look at the root causes that are causing the rise.
“We may find ways to make our portion more efficient,” Brown said.
House Democratic Leader Phil Giaquinta responded to the governor-elect's recent agenda announcements, saying, “From cutting health care costs to raising teacher pay, House Democrats fully support Governor-elect Mike Brown's agenda. There are several issues on the agenda,” he said in a statement.
Giaquinta's statement further stated:
“Unfortunately, his plan makes no mention of expanding child care or universalizing preschool, and focuses too much on expanding the school voucher program. If we want to provide our children with a better future, it starts with child care and access to early education.”
Giaquinta said the House Democratic Caucus looks forward to working with the new governor across the aisle and “pushing the majority party toward real results.”
