PRIORITIES

Promise kept: No one should have to choose between affording their lives and affording to live: when pharmaceutical companies gouge people on the price of the drugs, it’s unconscionable. I successfully defended the Alec Smith Insulin Affordability Act in court against industry efforts to protect their profits over people’s lives. I joined almost every state in the country in suing manufacturers of generic drugs for illegal price-fixing and illegal allocation of markets in what’s been called the “largest cartel in history,” which has artificially inflated drug prices for consumers while making billions in profits for pharmaceutical companies. I’ve continued the State’s lawsuit against insulin manufacturers for fraudulently setting an artificially high “list” price for the products, then negotiating a much lower, secret, actual price with pharmacy benefit managers. I’ve also fought at the Legislature for bills to ban unconscionable price-gouging on pharmaceutical drugs and for more transparency in drug pricing, against Republican opposition. And I kept my promise to convene a task force on how to bring down pharmaceutical drug costs: we published a plain-language report with 14 recommendations that call for making overly complex, opaque, and dysfunctional markets work better for people; using public power to make drugs more affordable and accessible, especially life-saving ones; and requiring more transparency and accountability in the pharmaceutical-drug market. The report won an award from the National Council for State Legislatures. I will keep fighting to turn all its recommendations into reality, many of which the Legislature can adopt in Minnesota.

Promise kept: No amount of money can make up for the death and destruction that opioid companies have wrought on Minnesota families and communities, but we must hold them accountable. I expanded the State’s lawsuit against Purdue Pharma to include eight members of the Sackler family as individual defendants for defrauding and deceiving Minnesotans about the harmful effects of their powerful, blockbuster opioid, Oxycontin. We showed that they knew but denied and downplayed the risks of Oxycontin, stigmatized people who were addicted it, then paid themselves $4 billion in profits. Minnesota and other states have reached settlements with eight opioid companies that may put hundreds of millions of dollars into a dedicated fund for treatment, abatement, and prevention, which my office helped create with legislators of both parties. I also fought successfully in these settlements for transparency and disclosure of tens of millions of internal documents from the opioid companies: history will know exactly how they did what they did to us so that it can never happen again.

Promise kept: Affordable healthcare is a fundamental human right. I am proud to have been part of a broad coalition of AGs that successfully defended the Affordable Care Act all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld it against years of right-wing challenges. This means that the ACA will continue to provide coverage to 2.3 million Minnesotans with pre-existing conditions, will continue to guarantee preventive healthcare to 2.7 million Minnesotans — including contraceptive healthcare for 1 million Minnesotans — and will continue to provide coverage for 300,000 lower-income Minnesotans who might have lost it if the ACA had been overturned.

Promise kept: You should take home every dollar you’ve earned on the job: this means your employer should pay you every dollar you’ve earned, including overtime. I promised that as Attorney General, I would protect Minnesotans’ wages from theft, and I’ve kept that promise. I created the first-ever Wage Theft Unit in the Attorney General’s Office that investigates and litigates complaints of wage theft and other workplace fraud and abuse perpetrated against Minnesotans of all backgrounds, especially the most vulnerable. So far we’ve put more than $270,000 back into Minnesotans’ pockets by enforcing a new law I helped pass to fight wage theft. I also stood up to a Trump administration rule that would have removed overtime protections for 8 million workers nationwide.

Promise kept: Every Minnesotan deserves a safe, stable home for themselves and their families. This includes tenants and renters, who can be vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. I filed a lawsuit against a Minneapolis landlord who preys on low-income and vulnerable tenants in an “eviction for profit” scheme, and another lawsuit against the owner of a manufactured-home park in Marshall for charging illegally high fees and failing to maintain the park. During the COVID-19 peacetime emergency, my office was also charged with enforcing the executive order banning evictions: we investigated 3,200 complaints from Minnesotans and filed nine lawsuits to block landlords from illegally evicting tenants during the pandemic. I won’t hesitate to use Minnesota landlord-tenant, consumer-protection, and other laws that protect consumers to make sure all Minnesotans have a safe place to live.

Promise kept: People take out loans for higher education to better their futures and afford their lives. My office has continued to hold unscrupulous schools and loan-servicing companies accountable when they take advantage of students. We concluded a seven-year-long investigation and lawsuit against Minnesota School of Business/Globe University for defrauding students and enticing them into taking student loans at illegally high rates of interest, winning more than $40 million in restitution and debt-forgiveness for affected MSB/Globe students. We’ve also won several million dollars in debt relief for former students of now-defunct ITT Technical Institute, I’m fighting to discharge loans that ITT students took out when the school was engaged in systemic fraud, and I’ve sought relief for students unfairly harmed by the sudden closure of Argosy University and Art Institutes. My office has also won settlements from a number of private student-debt companies for misleading or defrauding Minnesotans and we have banned some of them from doing any more business in Minnesota. I sued Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to protect Minnesota students from fraud and abuse and joined a national coalition of attorneys general in calling for the cancellation of up to $50,000 in federal student debt per borrower.

Promise kept: No matter whether we live in urban, suburban, or rural communities, we are all Minnesotans and all connected to each other. But people in Greater Minnesota face particular challenges in affording their lives. That’s why I’ve held a cable company accountable for deceptive advertising and substandard service in Greater Minnesota, and pushed back against telecom industry efforts to reduce landline service to communities where broadband is unavailable. I’ve joined a group of bipartisan attorneys general in calling for a federal investigation of antitrust practices in the beefpacking industry and more federal protections for workers in the meatpacking industry. I’m looking at other creative ways to help rural Minnesotans get out from under the high costs of market concentration and potentially unfair competition in the retail sector.

Promise kept: Everyone should be protected from financial exploitation and scams. That’s why I stood up to a number of Trump administration attempts to delay, skirt, or eliminate protections against unconscionable predatory lending. To help people fight scams and abuse, we mediate disputes between consumers and businesses: last year, we put $7.8 million back into Minnesotans’ pockets. We also make sure charities follow the law and have shut down several that have not, including ones that exploited veterans and people who donated to support them. During the pandemic, we alerted the public to COVID-related scams and partnered with federal and local law enforcement in fighting them. We’ve also shut down several companies that fraudulently advertised forgiveness of student loans and charged people money to fill out forms that they can fill out for free.

Promise kept: Access to safe and legal reproductive health care is a human right and an issue that affects people of every gender. I have fought throughout my term as attorney general for the constitutional right to reproductive health care, including access to abortion care. I’m proud to join attorneys general from around the country in fighting the unconstitutional laws from Texas and Mississippi at the U.S. Supreme Court and fighting to uphold Roe vs. Wade against orchestrated right-wing attacks. We cannot let our country go back to the dark days of before Roe.

Promise kept: When healthcare providers and insurance companies don’t treat all Minnesotans fairly, I’ll hold them accountable. My office reached a settlement with a hospital that had unilaterally changed billing terms on its patients: we required them to restore more favorable billing terms, which led to $184,000 in debt forgiveness and significant discounts on patients’ bills. We will continue to enforce the hospital agreement that protects patients against aggressive billing and debt collection practices by Minnesota nonprofit hospitals. I’m also working to make sure that health insurance companies provide Minnesotans with all the benefits to which they are entitled, including mental-health coverage.

Promise kept: People who rely on Medicaid for the healthcare should be able to trust that every dollar is being spent on their care. My office has continued to support the integrity of the Medicaid program by partnering with the federal government to make sure that all Medicaid dollars are spent on the care of people who need it, and to hold people criminally and civilly accountable when they defraud patients and taxpayers. My office has won millions of Medicaid dollars back for taxpayers.

Promise kept: The great Minnesotan, Hubert Humphrey, once said that “the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” I agree. My office has held accountable bad actors who have exploited low-income seniors through Medicaid fraud, and is prosecuting the operators of an assisted-living facility in Aitkin County for manslaughter, assault, neglect, racketeering, theft, and Medicaid fraud. Protecting seniors from scams is also important: my office regularly works with seniors to help them recoup money lost to scammers and other unscrupulous businesses, and we have especially targeted “tech support” scams that exploit seniors.