INTERVIEW AVAILABILITY: Halleland Health Consulting Makes Health Policy Expertise Available Durin...( MINNEAPOLIS Sept. 2 /- With a new...),Health

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- With a new presidential administration on the way, health care reform weighs heavily on the minds of Americans. For insights on what may come, attendees of the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul needn't look further than Halleland Health Consulting, which is making itself available to media on an individual basis.

The consulting group and its law firm parent -- Minneapolis-based Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson -- provide advice and consulting services on health care reform strategies to policymakers, state and local agencies, and private health care and business groups across the country.

Halleland attorneys and consultants have played major roles in the development of Minnesota's health policies and marketplace strategies. Minnesota enjoys the lowest percentage of uninsured in the country and consistently places among the top states for quality of care, health status of the population and health care efficiency. The state's Minnesota Care Program for low-income uninsured workers, which was established in 1992, served as the model for the national Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

According to Michael Scandrett, Halleland Health Consulting's chief policy analyst, while other states such as Massachusetts have received a lot of attention lately for their health care reform activities, Minnesota has already achieved the goals to which these other states aspire and is now leading the way into the next health care reform era. He says bipartisan legislation passed in 2008 moves toward major transformation in health care financing and incentives to control costs. "Health insurance alone will not solve the underlying system problems that lead to escalating costs, medical errors and inconsistent quality," says Scandrett.

Scandrett adds that state experimentation will lead the way to national health care reform. "Historically, the power of Medicaid combined with the federal governme
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