North Dakota
'False promise' or lifesaver? Insulin spending cap returns to North Dakota Legislature
BISMARCK — A bill introduced in the North Dakota House of Representatives could cap out-of-pocket insulin costs for some North Dakotans at $25 per month.
The bill also includes a monthly cap for insulin-related medical supplies of $25.
With insulin costing North Dakota residents billions of dollars each year,
House Bill 1114
would provide relief for people on fully insured plans provided by individual, small and large group employers. People on self-funded plans would not be affected.
“I call insulin liquid gold,” Nina Kritzberger, a 16-year-old Type 1 diabetic from Hillsboro, told lawmakers. “My future depends on this bill.”
HB 1114 builds on
legislation
proposed during the 2023 session that similarly sought to establish spending caps on insulin products.
Before any health insurance mandate is enacted,
state law
requires the proposed changes first be tested on state employee health plans.
As such, the legislation was altered to order the state Public Employees Retirement System, or PERS, to introduce an updated bill based on the implementation of a $25 monthly cap on a smaller scale.
The updated bill — House Bill 1114 — would bring the cap out of PERS oversight and into the North Dakota Insurance Department, which regulates the fully insured market but not the self-insured market.
Employers that provide self-insured health programs use profits to cover claims and fees, acting as their own insurers.
Fully insured plans refer to employers that pay a third-party insurance carrier a fixed premium to cover claims and fees.
“It (the mandate) doesn’t impact the entire insurance market within North Dakota,” PERS Executive Director Rebecca Fricke testified during a Government and Veterans Affairs Committee meeting on Thursday, Jan. 9.
Blue Cross Blue Shield Vice President Megan Hruby told the committee that two-thirds of the provider’s members would not be eligible for the monthly cap, calling the bill a “false promise.”
“We do not make health insurance more affordable by passing coverage mandates, as insurance companies don’t pay for mandates. Policy holders pay for mandates in the form of increased premiums,” Hruby said.
She touted the insurance provider having already placed similar caps on insulin products and said companies should be making those decisions, not the state government.
Sanford Health and the Greater North Dakota Chamber also had representatives testify against the bill.
Advocates for the spending cap said higher premiums are worth lowering the cost of insulin drugs and supplies.
“One of the first things that people ask me about is, ‘Why should I pay for your insulin?’ And my response is, ‘Why should I have to pay for your premiums?’” Danelle Johnson, of Horace, said in her testimony.
If adopted and as written, the spending caps brought by
House Bill 1114
would apply to the North Dakota commercial insurance market and cost the state around $834,000 over the 2025-27 biennium.
According to the 2024 North Dakota diabetes report,
medical fees associated with the condition cost North Dakotans over $306 billion in 2022.
The state has more than 57,200 adults diagnosed with diabetes, and a staggering 38% have prediabetes — a condition where blood sugar levels are high but not high enough to cause Type 2 diabetes.
Nearly half of those people are adults 65 years old or older.
North Dakotan tribal members were also found to be twice as likely to have diabetes compared to their white counterparts.
North Dakota
North Dakota officials celebrate being among big winners in federal rural health funding
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Tony Osburn scored 27 points as Omaha beat North Dakota 90-79 on Thursday.
Osburn shot 8 of 12 from the field, including 5 for 8 from 3-point range, and went 6 for 9 from the line for the Mavericks (8-10, 1-2 Summit League). Paul Djobet scored 18 points and added 12 rebounds. Ja’Sean Glover finished with 10 points.
The Fightin’ Hawks (8-11, 2-1) were led by Eli King, who posted 21 points and two steals. Greyson Uelmen added 19 points for North Dakota. Garrett Anderson had 15 points and two steals.
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
MINOT — Minot’s District 3 is home to Reps. Jeff Hoverson and Lori VanWinkle, two of the most controversial members of the Legislature, but maybe not for much longer.
District 3, like all odd-numbered districts in our state, is on the ballot this election cycle, and the House incumbents there
have just drawn two serious challengers.
Tim Mihalick and Blaine DesLauriers, each with a background in banking, have announced campaigns for those House seats. Mihalick is a senior vice president at First Western Bank & Trust and serves on the State Board of Higher Education. DesLauriers is vice chair of the board and senior executive vice president at First International Bank & Trust.
The entry into this race has delighted a lot of traditionally conservative Republicans in North Dakota
Hoverson, who has worked as a Lutheran pastor, has frequently made headlines with his bizarre antics. He was
banned from the Minot International Airport
after he accused a security agent of trying to touch his genitals. He also
objected
to a Hindu religious leader participating in the Legislature’s schedule of multi-denominational invocation leaders and, on his local radio show, seemed to suggest that Muslim cultures that force women to wear burkas
have it right.
Hoeverson has also backed legislation to mandate prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and to encourage the end of Supreme Court precedent prohibiting bans on same sex marriage.
Tom Stromme / The Bismarck Tribune
VanWinkle, for her part, went on a rant last year in which she suggested that women struggling with infertility have been cursed by God
(she later claimed her comments, which were documented in a floor speech, were taken out of context)
before taking
a weeklong ski vacation
during the busiest portion of the legislative session (she continued to collect her daily legislative pay while absent). When asked by a constituent why she doesn’t attend regular public forums in Minot during the legislative session,
she said she wasn’t willing to “sacrifice” any more of her personal time.
The incumbents haven’t officially announced their reelection bids, but it’s my practice to treat all incumbents as though they’re running again until we learn otherwise.
In many ways, VanWinkle and Hoverson are emblematic of the ascendant populist, MAGA-aligned faction of the North Dakota Republican Party. They are on the extreme fringe of conservative politics, and openly detest their traditionally conservative leaders. Now they’ve got challengers who are respected members of Minot’s business community, and will no doubt run well-organized and well-funded campaigns.
If the 2026 election is a turning point in the
internecine conflict among North Dakota Republicans
— the battle to see if our state will be governed by traditional conservatives or culture war populists — this primary race in District 3 could well be the hinge on which it turns.
In the 2024 cycle, there was an effort, largely organized by then-Rep. Brandon Prichard, to push far-right challengers against more moderate incumbent Republicans.
It was largely unsuccessful.
Most of the candidates Prichard backed lost, including Prichard himself, who was
defeated in the June primary
by current Rep. Mike Berg, a candidate with a political profile not all that unlike that of Mihalick and DesLauriers.
But these struggles among Republicans are hardly unique to North Dakota, and the populist MAGA faction has done better elsewhere. In South Dakota, for instance, in the 2024 primary,
more than a dozen incumbent Republicans were swept out of office.
Can North Dakota’s normie Republicans avoid that fate? They’ll get another test in 2026, but recruiting strong challengers like Mihalick and DesLauriers is a good sign for them.
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