“Gardner and McConnell, they’re all taking a four-week recess as if there’s no sense of urgency”
While campaigning across the Western Slope last week, John Hickenlooper stopped at Delta County Memorial Hospital, one of a dozen rural hospitals he helped save as governor. He talked with the Montrose Daily Press about access to health care in rural areas, the Senate’s unfathomable inaction on COVID relief, and his plan to protect people with pre-existing conditions (which, unlike Senator Cory Gardner’s, would actually protect people with pre-existing conditions).
See highlights from the Montrose Daily Press below, or read online HERE.
Hickenlooper shares thoughts on support for rural hospitals and universal coverage during Delta visit
On the campaign trail throughout the Western Slope, John Hickenlooper, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, stopped by Delta County Memorial Hospital on Saturday, a facility he aided by signing the Medicaid expansion bill in 2013 as governor of Colorado.
Now, as Hickenlooper campaigns for the U.S. Senate, he’s continuing the promotion of health care for rural hospitals and opposes incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner’s mission to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — Gardner, and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, support President Trump’s Supreme Court lawsuit to repeal the ACA, which is being pushed without a substitute plan.
“Not only do we lose protections for pre-existing medical conditions — in Colorado, it’s about 2.4 million people — we also would weaken our rural healthcare system and would probably have 10 or 12 hospitals having to close. In the middle of a pandemic, this makes no sense to me,” Hickenlooper told local media after recording a video with his campaign team.
The former governor expressed his desire to continue the support for rural hospitals and support a plan focused on universal coverage.
“What I hope to do in the U.S. Senate is to make sure that we piece together universal coverage,” Hickenlooper said, “because as long as people don’t have coverage, then we can get infected by nobody. We’re only as strong as our weakest link in healthcare. My commitment is to go back and fight in Washington.”
Hickenlooper went on to criticize the Senate, currently on recess until Sept. 8, for taking the recess rather than focusing on how to help rural hospitals, like Delta Memorial, recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision contradicts a recent statement from Gardner, who tweeted on May 20 that it was “unfathomable” for the Senate to take a recess before considering “additional assistance for the American people.”
“Gardner and McConnell, they’re all taking a four-week recess as if there’s no sense of urgency,” he said. “I feel like we worked very hard in this state to get to almost 95% health coverage by expanding Medicaid and creating an innovative, truly innovation based exchange, and now they want to throw it all away and start all over again.”…
Hickenlooper added a repeal of the ACA would doom people with pre-existing conditions who receive coverage through the ACA, and criticized Gardner’s proposed bill, introduced this month, that guarantees Coloradans with pre-existing conditions health insurance protections.
“If that lawsuit succeeds and ends up repealing the Affordable Care Act, it’s going to hurt rural health care, urban health care,” Hickenlooper said.
“Cory Gardner said that he has some bill to protect pre-existing conditions. Go check it out. There’s nothing there. There’s no ‘there, there.’ They don’t have a bill. They don’t have an idea.”
