Thursday, March 28, 2024

Dr. Kim Schrier visits Leavenworth Rotary

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Washington’s 8th District Congresswoman Dr. Kim Schrier held a mini-Town Hall at Leavenworth Rotary Club’s Friday meeting. Dr. Schrier is in her first term as a Democrat representative. Her primary campaign issue was protecting and expanding the Affordable Care Act.

 She lives in Sammamish with her husband and son. She is the only woman Doctor in the House of Representatives.

Schrier began her discussion saying she did not want to be political in her presentation. She just wanted to talk about issues she is working on and then take questions.

Schrier started out talking about the ACA saying that as a doctor and woman with a pre-existing condition, she is a Type 1 diabetic, she was concerned about the efforts to repeal the ACA. She said she was concerned that a lot of talk show hosts and lawyers were probably not the best people to be making decisions about health care policy.

“There are 26 million people in this country with pre-existing conditions that could not get health insurance before the ACA and every big policy change we have made in this country there is a first step and then additional steps to improve on it” said Schrier. “ACA was a very good first step but it needs many tweaks to make it better. I was concerned about the efforts to just toss it out the window”

Schrier went on to say we essentially have one insurance provider here and that means it’s a monopoly. The ACA will compete with private insurance and bring costs down.

We have also initiated a bill which has already passed in the house giving Medicare the ability to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs.

“It is insane that the largest purchaser of medications in the world cannot negotiate prices yet must provide coverage for every prescription drug available,” said Schrier. “That one change will save over a half a trillion dollars over ten years.”

Schrier also said she has a vaccination bill that will address the issue of misinformation about vaccines and try to improve the vaccination rates.

Schrier said she is concerned about gun violence particularly among depressed teenagers. She is not sure why there seems to be a growing trend of depression among teenagers but we must begin to address the problem. There is a bill on Mitch McConnell’s (Senate Majority Leader) desk to expand background checks to insure troubled teenagers are identified before they get their hands on a gun.

Another thing Schrier ran on was a promise to root out corruption. She admitted that was an area she was having difficulty with but she and many of the new class of representatives have pledged not to take corporate PAC money. She did not want her constituents wondering if she voted in support of a bill because of donations from a corporate pack or because she thought the bill was in the best interest of the country.

In answer to a question about how do we get better cooperation between the parties on capitol hill Schrier said; “If you watch cable news all day you would assume that there are just a bunch of jerks in Washington who cannot get along and that we are just mad all of the time. That’s not true. There are a number of bipartisan bills on Mitch McConnell’s desk waiting to be moved forward. And I am not naïve, having 2 Republicans in support of a bill is not bipartisan. I’ll give you a great example, there is a bill on McConnell’s desk called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. It does a number of great things to help with temporary farm labor for farmers all across the country. All of our Washington Representatives are in support of this bill.”

In answer to a question on lobbyists Schrier said: Lobbyists don’t know how to handle the new class of representatives that don’t take money, but while we are concerned about the influence of money on policies, lobbyists are important. While we tend to cast them as bad, the reality is lobbyists often provide valuable insight to an issue. For example, if you have no lobbyists then organizations like The Alzheimer’s Association doesn’t have a voice in making important policy decisions.

In answer to a question about the insufficiency of provider reimbursements from Medicaid Schrier said:

This is one of the problems in our crazy mixed-up medical care system. Medicare does not pay enough and Medicaid is even worse. It would be nice to have transparency in billing so everyone knew exactly what things actually cost. We also need to address why health care in this country is so expensive and yet we get worse outcomes. The question you raise about the increasing need without the increase in funding is one of the great issues.

The great problem is that politicians are often more worried about their next election than about the long term implications of their decisions.

Congresswoman Kim Schrier, M. D. can be reached through her Wenatchee office at 850-5340

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