Local faith leader says legislators avoiding real issues

The Senate health and welfare committee voted along party lines to reject a bid to bring the “Healthy Idaho” plan onto the Senate floor– after an interfaith group urged the statehouse to expand health care coverage.

“Health Idaho” aims to give health care to the estimated 78,000 uninsured people in the state.

Sen. Dan Schmidt, D-Moscow, made the bid to bring the bill to the Senate. Also, members of the Interfaith Alliance spoke in favor of the bill to House Speaker Scott Bedke and Tammy Perkins, the senior special assistant for health and social services for Gov. Butch Otter’s office.

The Interfaith Alliance also wrote a letter, urging Otter and other Idaho lawmakers to close the state’s health coverage gap.

Rev. Lyn Stangland Cameron, the minister of Unitarian Universalist Church in Idaho Falls, said she feels legislators are avoiding the real issues. Also adding the legislators aren’t representing the people of Idaho.

“Our legislators like to have people in Idaho believe they’re caring and responsible representatives,” Cameron said. “The choices they’re making seem to speak a different language, it sounds like a language of self-interest.”

Cameron adds she hopes she’s wrong, but if the legislature doesn’t start listening it’s time to change who’s representing the people of Idaho in the statehouse.

The same committee that voted against bringing the “Healthy Idaho” bill to the Senate held a hearing for the bill earlier this session. The testimony for it was overwhelmingly in favor, but no action was made after the hearing.