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MinnEcon Blog
Paul Tosto

Your health coverage. What happened? 6 words.

Go Deeper.

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Last spring we asked you to sum up in six words your experiences with health care coverage during the recession.

Your responses were eye-opening.

Minnesotans in MPR's Public Insight Network shared more than 100 stories of success and frustration (mostly frustration) searching and paying for affordable health care.

One in particular spoke volumes about life in the recession: "Clueless until I lost my job."

With the economic recovery officially a year and a half old, we want to see if things are better.

So tell us your health coverage story in six words.

Our post Monday on the health care haves and have-nots in Minnesota. got us remembering how much we learned from our audience with last year's six word challenge.

Updated numbers from the state Health Department show how the recession torpedoed the way many of us paid for health care. Employer coverage dropped significantly in the downturn and people shifted to publicly subsidized programs or simply went without coverage.

The data show how much the job market supports our health care coverage and how deeply the recession has reached into the state's middle income homes.

So tell us now what's happened to your coverage. Post something below or share your response with us directly at MinnEcon. Briefly.

We've also added a question this time around Will the new federal health care law directly help you or anyone you know? You can go more than six words on that one.

By the way, here's how I summed up my health care coverage experience last year:

Job questions: Prior conditions covered? Affordably?

Those were vital questions when I took this job. One of my kids has significant health needs. Happily, the answers were yes. But those questions will drive my job decisions for a long time to come.

NOTE: Our efforts were inspired by SMITH Magazine's ongoing Six-Word Memoir project.