16 June 2017 — 1512 mdt

Pressure Daines & GG by pressuring hospital boards & executives

All progressives know, or should know, that Senate Majority Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his henchmen are working in secret to write a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act. They hope to sneak it through the U.S. Senate by the Fourth of July, just two weeks from now. It will, as you know from many sources, be profitable for the rich and deadly for the middle class, and especially deadly for the poor.

Although Montana’s progressives should continue applying heat, and plenty of it, to Sen. Steve Daines and Rep-elect Greg Gianforte, they should also apply indirect pressure to Daines and Gianforte by applying plenty of heat to the boards of directors and executives of Montana’s hospitals, who are facing an almost $5 billion shortfall in Medicaid if the ACA is replaced by the Trump-Ryan American Health Care Act.

Daines and Gianforte are rich men who won’t listen to the 95 percent, but they will listen to their social peers, and near peers, who administer Montana’s hospitals and who sit on the boards of those hospitals. Bringing public and private pressure on these people will stiffen their spines and put them in a stronger position to insist that health care for the many should not be sacrificed on the altar of lower taxes for the few.

• Montana Hospital Association
• Kalispell Regional Medical Center
• More hospitals in Montana

Some hospitals try to keep the names of their directors secret, a shameful practice that’s solid proof they’re doing things they shouldn’t be doing, and that they don’t want to hear from the public (they’ll say this is done for security reasons, but that’s horse manure). Keep digging.

Keep smiling. But if necessary, start shouting. Do what’s necessary to make yourselves heard.