Republicans need to be specific on health care

Editor:

The primary season is over. The hard-line Republicans and Democrats now know who they are going to vote for and the battle for independent voters is just beginning. NAMI Montana has leaders and members of both political stripes with plenty falling somewhere in between. The same can be said of all of the one-in-five Montana families that are impacted by serious mental illnesses.

Republicans could finish this election season in control of the presidency, two-thirds of Montana'S congressional delegation, the governor's office, the attorney general's office, the insurance commissioner's office, the secretary of state's office and both branches of the Montana Legislature. In layman's terms, the Republicans have the opportunity to take the keys and get behind the wheel of both the federal and state governments.

If the Republicans get this opportunity, one of their main priorities will be erasing the Democrats' efforts to rework the nation's health care system. The candidates' primary talking points have left little doubt about what they will oppose, but Montanans need to know more about what these candidates would like our health care system to look like and how they plan to make that vision happen. Montana voters have seen some generalities, but we need to see the specifics.

If you want to accomplish tort reform, what does that look like? If you want to open Montana's insurance market up to out-of-state companies, will the state auditor police those contracts or should it be strictly buyer-beware? Will there be protections to ensure that insurance companies don't refuse to cover people with medical issues or histories of having medical issues? What options will be available to Montana families that cannot afford private insurance due economic circumstances or health issues that priced them out of the market?

These are politically-loaded questions, but the answers are critical to the lives of every Montanan who will come in contact, either personally or through a loved one, with our state's medical system. The Democrats' health care reform efforts have given us a good idea where they stand on these issues. Montana's Republican Party and its candidates need to formalize their vision for our health care system so Montana's voters can use that information to determine which candidates to support this fall. Health care is too big of an issue for us to wait until after the election to find out the specifics of each party's agenda.

Matt Kuntz, executive director

National Alliance on

Mental Illness/Montana