Thursday June 14th is the second Thursday of the month. That means it's Fight Mental Illness Thursday. This month we're asking Montanans to contact the Montana Republican Party and ask them for details on their alternative to healthcare reform. Please give them a call at (406) 442-6469 or send them a message on their website, http://www.mtgop.org/index.php/get-involved/contact-us.html.
Thanks for all your help! Here's a fuller description of why we're asking them for these details.
Thanks,
Matt
Need for Specifics on
Republicans’ Alternative to Healthcare Reform
The primary season is over. The hard-line Republicans and
Democrats now know who they are going to vote for and the battle for
independent voters is just beginning.
NAMI Montana has leaders and members of both political stripes with
plenty falling somewhere in between. The same can be said of all of the
one-in-five Montana families that
are impacted by serious mental illnesses.
Republicans could finish this election season in control of
the presidency, two-thirds of Montana ’s
congressional delegation, the Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office,
the Insurance Commissioner’s office, the Secretary of State’s office and both
branches of the Montana Legislature. In layman’s terms, the Republicans have
the opportunity to take the keys and get behind the wheel of both the federal
and state governments.
If the Republicans get this opportunity, one of their main
priorities will be erasing the Democrats’ efforts to rework the nation’s healthcare
system. The candidates’ primary talking points have left little doubt about
what they will oppose, but Montanans need to know more about what these candidates
would like our healthcare system to look like and how they plan to make that
vision happen. Montana voters have
seen some generalities, but we need to see the specifics.
If you want to accomplish tort reform, what does that look
like? If you want to open Montana ’s
insurance market up to out-of-state companies, will the State Auditor police
those contracts or should it be strictly buyer-beware? Will there be protections
to ensure that insurance companies don’t refuse to cover people with medical
issues or histories of having medical issues? What options will be available to
Montana families that cannot
afford private insurance due economic circumstances or health issues that
priced them out of the market?
These are politically-loaded questions, but the answers are
critical to the lives of every Montanan who will come in contact, either
personally or through a loved one, with our state’s medical system. The
Democrats’ healthcare reform efforts have given us a good idea where they stand
on these issues. Montana ’s
Republican Party and its candidates need to formalize their vision for our
healthcare system so Montana ’s
voters can use that information to determine which candidates to support this
fall. Healthcare is too big of an issue for us to wait until after the election
to find out the specifics of each party’s agenda.
