State Creates Health Care Affordability Advisory Task Force

September 4, 2025

The Center for Health Care Affordability (CHCA) at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) is forming a Health Care Affordability Advisory Task Force.  

The 15-member task force, which will hold its first meeting on September 12, is charged with studying and recommending ways to improve health care affordability in Minnesota. 

The Health Care Affordability Advisory Task Force represents a balance of perspectives, including consumer voices, expertise in health care financing and administration, firsthand experience with affordability challenges, and leadership from both urban and rural parts of the state. It is tasked with identifying the key drivers of health care spending growth and developing bold, evidence-based policy options to improve affordability for Minnesotans.  

In developing its recommendations, task force members will analyze Minnesota health care cost data, review national and state policy research, as well as elevate the lived experiences of patients, workers, and employers across the state. Task force members will also examine policies implemented in other states. They will look at impacts of those policies—including efforts to limit price growth, ensure equal payments for the same service regardless of care setting or increase oversight of health care consolidation—and consider whether these strategies could improve affordability for Minnesotans.  

Recognizing that rising health care costs are potentially putting care out of reach, the Minnesota Legislature directed MDH to establish the CHCA during its 2023 session. 

The CHCA's work will focus on: 

• Conducting research to understand the factors that drive health care costs. 

• Exploring ways to reduce waste and low-value care, administrative spending and improve the delivery of high-value care. 

• Consider the sustainability of health care spending growth and its relationship to health equity. 

• Identify potential improvements to delivery systems, payment structures and market reforms to enhance affordability. 

The Health Care Affordability Advisory Task Force is the first of two task forces that will advise the CHCA. It will work in close collaboration with a Provider and Payer Advisory Task Force forming later this year. All task force meetings are open to the public and accessible online. 

Visit the Health Care Affordability Advisory Task Force webpage for meeting times, locations, registration links, agendas and materials, as well as additional task force information. More information about the task force is available in the Health Care Affordability Advisory Task Force Charter (PDF).