Minnesota lawmakers pass $200 million funding bill to help hospitals, clinics deal with COVID-19 outbreak

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - Minnesota lawmakers worked through the night at the state Capitol to pass a $200 million bill that will provide funding for health care facilities across the state to deal with the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. 

Both the House and the Senate passed the bill unanimously. Lawmakers had to sit 6 feet apart while voting to maintain social distance, forcing some of them to sit in the chamber’s upper galleries. 

The bill includes $200 million in total investments. Of that $200 million, $150 million will go to the state’s health care response fund, which provides grants to providers to prepare for a COVID-19 response. The other $50 million is for a public health contingency account that will allow the Minnesota Department of Health to make payments to clinics, pharmacies, health care facilities and long-term care facilities as they deal with the pandemic. 

Now, lawmakers are headed home for the foreseeable future. 

 "I think tentatively we want to shoot for March 26, but I also want to be nimble enough that if we have something extraordinary that we need to be here because we don't know exactly where this is going to go,” Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said. “The worst case scenarios are scary. I’m hoping it's the opposite. I'm hoping the things we've done give us a best case scenario where we just come back on March 26 and there's maybe not as many things to do there as we're watching this."

The legislature is now working on an on-call basis. Lawmakers will be given 48 hours’ notice if they have to come back.