Questions for Walden 1-25-2017

2017-01-25

Questions for Walden

An open letter to Congressman Greg Walden:

Mr. Walden, your reported praise of the president’s new executive order to relax penalties and reduce enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s provisions is ill-advised at best. In the Gorge, including your home town of Hood River, thousands may lose essential access to health insurance coverage, hence to needed care, if the ACA’s fundamentals, including the individual mandate, are removed or collapse. Moreover, your reported support of reversing Medicaid expansion, Children’s Health Insurance, and other programs vital to the health of your constituents and neighbors; if true, would be a tragedy and embarrassment to our district.

For some reason, you have ignored repeated requests for response from some of your constituents on these matters recently, including myself.

I hope you will now reply to me in a substantive and personal manner that I may share with others here. Most of all. I hope that you will use your leadership to change course and protect the health and wellbeing of those whom you represent, rather than push ahead to fulfill ill-informed campaign promises by a presidential candidate who has demonstrated no understanding of health care history, policy, or health economics.

Tina Castañares, MD

Odell