How ironic to see Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, and her husband on the front page of The Columbian with their premature infant daughter. They are fortunate to have access to health insurance that enabled Herrera Beutler to get prenatal care in Vancouver and then at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
When the baby was born in Portland, she was immediately transferred to Stanford Medical Center in California for advanced critical care. Born with Potter’s syndrome, the little girl faces extensive and expensive continuing (and possible lifetime) medical care. Fortunately for the little girl, unless mom and her fellow Republican House members are successful in repealing or defunding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), there will be no insurance cap on her medical expenses. Also, she won’t be denied future health insurance.
After personally experiencing a family medical crisis, will her daughter’s medical condition cause Herrera Beutler to have a health care epiphany — extending health care to those less fortunate than she and her husband? It would be a moral act on her part to vote to extend to the many uninsured the same access to good health care that her family enjoys.
Alan Rossi
Vancouver