Star Tribune
UnitedHealthcare, Essentia Health agree to network contract for 2025
UnitedHealthcare and Essentia Health announced an agreement Friday for the Duluth-based health system to keep participating in the insurance company’s Medicare Advantage network next year, affecting about 10,000 patients.
Similar to HealthPartners, Essentia Health announced earlier this year the health system would go out-of-network for UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage patients due to what it described as high rates of denied claims and payment delays, as well as the insurer’s prior authorization requirements.
“We realize that the uncertainty of this situation was difficult for many of the patients we’re honored to serve,” Dr. Cathy Cantor, Essentia’s chief medical officer for population health, said Friday in a statement. “We felt strongly that it was important to advocate for our patients, and we were able to reach an agreement for 2025 that addresses many of our issues and concerns by improving timely and reliable access to the high-quality care they depend on from Essentia.”
Essentia Health said Friday it still plans to go out-of-network next year with Medicare Advantage plans from Kentucky-based Humana.
With 14 hospitals and 78 clinics, Essentia Health has operations in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest health insurer.
This fall’s Medicare open enrollment period has been unusual in Minnesota for the number of contract impasses that have complicated health plan choices for seniors. Beyond Essentia, three other health systems with operations in the state have announced they’ll go out of network next year with Humana, as well.
UnitedHealthcare said the contract agreement with Essentia announced Friday applies to Medicare Advantage plans for individuals as was as retiree groups.
NORTHFIELD – A decade after becoming the first legal spirit producer in southern Minnesota in more than a century, Loon Liquor Co. is doubling down on its presence here with an expanded destination-style distillery downtown.
Co-owners Simeon Rossi and Mark Schiller are finalizing plans to buy the former Northfield News building along Fifth Street W., where they hope to move their entire operation to by fall 2025. Loon Liquors, now in a business park on the outskirts of town, will pay the city of Northfield $960,000 for the property.
The new building, with about 7,500 square feet of space, will be more than double the size of the business’s existing facility, where it has been distilling spirits since 2014. Rossi and Schiller estimate the new space, which will house not only the distillery but also a 120-seat cocktail room, will cost an additional $3.5 million to build out.
Among their notable investments into the facility will be an on-site flour mill for making farm-fresh pizza, and a custom Italian-made still that will allow Loon to scale up its production of organic spirits by about eight times its current output.
“Not only are we going to be able to significantly increase capacity, but the new equipment will also be a beautiful showpiece and really draw people in,” said Rossi, who heads up product creation for Loon.
The decor at Loon Liquors includes lots of flavors they experiment with in their cocktails and spirits. (Renée Jones Schneider)
Loon now produces about 2,000 bottles of vodka, whiskey, gin and other made-from-scratch spirits per month, the owners said, triple what they were doing five years ago. In addition to selling their products on site, the brand is in about 400 Minnesota liquor stores and a couple of dozen restaurants.
Rossi and Schiller, former Northfield High School classmates who started the company with no distilling experience, said much of the growth has been driven by their pre-mixed cocktails, including an old fashioned mix that was released about 18 months ago and now accounts for about 40% of all sales.
The business has also been intentional about keeping prices below other small-batch craft brands. Prices vary location to location, but spirits generally go for about $27 per 750ml bottle while the premixed bottles are about $23.
Shortly before 6 p.m., two people got out of a car with guns — a pistol and a fully automatic rifle — and fired at least 42 rounds into a crowd and hit “no less than nine people,” the charges read. ShotSpotter technology detected at least 28 shots fired within 1½ seconds.
Surveillance video from “various sources” helped investigators identify the car and track it to Butcher’s guardian as the owner. Three days after the shooting, investigators saw Butcher get in the vehicle outside the home of his brother and drive away. Undercover officers tailed Butcher, and the State Patrol attempted to stop him, but he sped off and was not pursued.
Six months later, Butcher was arrested after he showed up at HCMC to be treated for a gunshot wound he suffered during a burst of gunfire near the 1300 block of W. Lake Street in the Uptown area.
Now, SoDak’s capital, Pierre, is approximately 1,100 miles from the Mexican border and some 589 miles from America’s best border crossing — Minnesota’s Northwest Angle. But what Noem lacks in qualifications, she more than makes up for in unhesitating, unquestioning, uncritical capitulation to Trump’s every whim. And Homeland Security will be the agency tasked with those mass deportations Trump promised on the campaign trail.
The infuriating idea that random rich guys could move American troops around like pawns on a chessboard if they threw enough money at a politician prompted Congress to ban the use of private funds for interstate guard deployments. A law that didn’t need to exist before Noem came along.
Her attempt to cover up the fact that she rented out 48 National Guard troops for a billionaire’s pet project cost South Dakota $42,000 to settle a lawsuit with the watchdog group that blew the whistle. The funds covered the legal costs to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington after the South Dakota National Guard stonewalled their request for public records on the stunt deployment. Those records also showed that even after the billionaire chipped in, South Dakota taxpayers had to pay an additional $500,000 for the deployment.
For five years, Kristi Noem placed Donald Trump’s wishes above the needs of her own state. This is her reward.
