If you live in rural Colorado on the Eastern Plains, these are the two people who will have the greatest clout in the argument for reasonable preservation of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a ACA, Obamacare). They are old friends from the Colorado State Legislature where they served together before Cory Gardner won his U.S. Senate seat. They are both conservatives and both proponents of "anything but Obamacare." Of course there has been no substantive alternative plan floated by either of these two men. They both are seemingly unmoved by the pleas of their constituents who fear for the health and well-being of their families who are dependent on uninterrupted healthcare that cannot be taken away for preexisting conditions or be capped based on treatment needed.
These two elected officials have great appeal in rural Colorado for the majority of the people living there. There is no secret that rural America tends to be conservative and has a high proportion of Evangelical Christians. Both of these politicians have their roots in agricultural settings. That said, what bothers me the most about these two men is that they both are against the kind of healthcare where women make choices that are suited to their beliefs and needs. care Small towns the likes of which these two men evolved are places where religious beliefs sometimes make their way into the private confines of a doctors office. Women want to be able to chose for themselves whether they wish to become pregnant and have a family. Women often want easy access to birth control pills or IUD's so they may plan for their financial futures. They may need birth control pill for a wide array of female specific maladies, it is not just about getting pregnant and they want that decision to be theirs. They do not want to be harassed by people who believe every trip to a Planned Parenthood facility is an appointment for an abortion. But these two guys are just fine with that. In fact both are major proponents of legislation that reduces a woman's opportunity to receive quality healthcare for any reason including reproductive health. The cavalier dismantling of the Affordable Care Act and the defunding of Planned Parenthood just about guarantees that women especially those who have to raise a family on their own are going to get abandoned by the system. They are tired of men controlling their bodies.
Let's be perfectly clear here, there are good doctors both in Yuma where Cory is from and Sterling where Jerry makes his home. There is even a Planned Parenthood office in Sterling. But let's just say you are living in Yuma and you give birth to a child with a genetic anomaly. It is almost a guarantee that he or she will need access to affordable healthcare for the remainder of their life. Just a few years ago, that meant that if the child's parents attempted to gain access to health insurance the application would have been denied because the condition was preexisting. The family would have run through its financial resources almost immediately. Bankruptcy would soon have followed. The child's life would have been put in jeopardy because of lack of treatment and then would likely have died. It is a scenario that was all too real just a few years ago in the days before the ACA. The ACA is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but is doing it is a hell of an improvement. But now, the republicans are on the brink of taking away the healthcare from 30,000,000 people. They also decided to allow whatever the future replacement plan is to not honor the most important aspects of the ACA i.g., no disqualification based on preexisting conditions, children being allowed to stay on their parents insurance policies until the age of twenty-six, and no caps on major illnesses. Never forget that before the ACA, the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States was health related. This is a situation that can happen to families in Yuma, Sterling, Hugo, Aurora, Denver or Boulder. You see even conservative families also need adequate and affordable healthcare. Illness does not follow party lines even though Sonneberg and Gardner behave as though it does.
These two politicians serve the citizens of Colorado. Sonnenberg is probably safe in his senate seat due to the number of republican constituents in Eastern Colorado, but Cory Gardner has been put on notice by the voters of the entire state. Despite claims to the contrary by the cult of Trump, the progressives, if compelled to vote by the actions unfolding on our televisions daily, will definitely eclipse any attempts by the republicans to retain his seat in 2020. The Women's March on Denver was no fluke. The republicans, by blindly acquiescing to this mean spirited and woefully ill-prepared POTUS have done just what Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto supposedly lamented in his diary after the attack on Pearl Harbor when he wrote, "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." Women have it in their power to make the United States the envy of the world when it comes to healthcare. I believe Mr. Gardner is beginning to hear the banging on the gates. It remains to be seen whether Jerry Sonnenberg will begin to fear that the republicans will retain the control of the Colorado State Senate and tone his attack on healthcare down a bit.
Time will tell us much. SB17-003, only the third bill on the docket in the Colorado State Senate received such backlash and so many protestors at the capital that they postponed the initial hearing. It is an age old tactic to keep the majority party from having to field citizen opposition from an organized citizenry. The idea is they employed is that if you frustrate the people who have taken time off from work etc. by postponing a hearing without notice, they will be reluctant to come out again. It may have worked in past legislative sessions, but when you meet these people. When you begin to see the organization that is behind these protests, you begin to see that these people are as serious as a heart attack. They will not be backing down anytime soon. When people learned that the hearing was called off, instead of going away dejected, they either walked to the offices of elected officials or joined in the protest at Cory Gardner's office a few blocks away. That is not giving up. That is reconnaissance. The Indivisible movement is learning very quickly how to outpace the bureaucracy. Welcome to the age of social media and huge groups of highly motivated people of every demographic imaginable.
Finally, if you do get a chance to visit the offices of either of these two politicians, you may or may not ever get the chance to meet them. Their staffs are expert at keeping their bosses out of sight, especially if your hat is pink or your lapel pin is a donkey. But never leave without making the secretary take down your name and address. Make sure you leave a message and tell them you want a response. Then, as a final gesture, make sure they write down that you are not a paid protestor. If they balk, tell them you have others waiting down the hall that you can request to have join you and make the very same request. They work in your capital. They will almost always do as you ask.
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