Idahoans did not voted for restricting health care access

Sixty-one percent of voters passed Medicaid expansion. We did not vote for restricting access.

Now Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare is taking public comments on the “work requirement.” This is just paperwork that could kick more than 21,000 low-income Idahoans off of health care, create a new bureaucracy and make people sicker. All costs to the taxpayers.

My friend who runs a day care center in Sandpoint almost lost her life to bladder cancer. She went into debt that she cannot repay. She is self-employed, working more than 40 hours a week. She works.

I’ve lost three friends who died because they did not have medical coverage. They all worked.

Republican Idahoans elected Gov. Brad Little in the primary mostly because they did not want “nobody dies” Raul Labrador to be elected governor. The people want Medicaid expansion with no qualifications attached. How can we say it any louder?

For the sake of the majority of Idahoans — and I include those who have lost people we love and who worry about our friends who need health care, whom we help as best we can; for the people who got Medicaid expansion on the ballot by standing out in an Idaho winter for four months to collect signatures, and most of all for the working people in the gap:

Please tell Idaho Health and Welfare to deny the restriction: closethegapidaho.org/take-action/take-email-action/ .

Next year, vote out the scoundrels in the Legislature who want to deny us our constitutional rights.

NANCY GERTH

Sagle