Democratic Legislators Discuss the Issues in Lake County
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
CONTACT
press@montanademocrats.org
Helena, MT – Democratic leaders kicked off a new year of the Legislative Listening Tour in Lake County last month, hosting back-to-back sessions in Ronan and Arlee.
Representative Mary Cafero (D-Helena) and Representative Tom France (D-Missoula) started in a crowded room at the Ronan Mission Valley Senior Center, where they heard from locals about a range of issues. The state’s Medicaid redetermination debacle and reauthorizing Medicaid expansion in Montana were hot topics among community members, who represented 7 different nearby communities.
Two hospital administrators, Tribal Councilwoman Carole Lankford of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and the former head of the state Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS), Anna Whiting Sorrell, were in attendance and echoed concerns surrounding the importance of Medicaid expansion in Lake County.
“It's not just the rural hospitals that would really struggle if something happens to Medicaid,” said Devin Huntley, chief operating officer for Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Polson. “It's the big hospitals also – the St. Pats, the Logans, the Communitys. They probably wouldn't close, but the number of services and the services that they do at break-even or even at a loss would disappear.”
Read the Valley Journal’s reporting of the event here.
The discussions continued the next day in Arlee, where a crowd of around thirty Lake County residents expressed their concerns about local issues, as well as the Medicaid redetermination process.
Community members shared their frustrations about the functionings of certain agencies and red tape initiatives in Helena – particularly within the DPHHS.
The next round of the Legislative Listening Tour will take place in late March.
As of today, the tour has logged more than 2,000 miles traveled throughout the state of Montana since the beginning of the tour.
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