With a unanimous vote, the Legislature’s working group on the health coverage gap has approved its final report to the Legislature, declaring firmly that the 2017 Legislature must act, but staying vague on exactly how. “A policy to provide health care of some kind to the gap population should be enacted by the 2017 Legislature,” the report says. You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.

“Committee, thank you for your hard work,” House Co-Chair Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Iona, told the 10-member panel, which has held months of meetings and hearings. “I know this has been strenuous this year given all the moving targets that are out there. I particularly would like to thank you all for looking seriously at this. It’s been neglected by us too long as legislative bodies. I think we have a better understanding now. I think our job now extends to going to the Legislature , our colleagues, and tell them of all the stuff that we did talk about here. We certainly will have the opportunity to do that, I’m sure, as time goes on during this next legislative session.”

Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, the Senate co-chairman, said, “We all came here with preconceived notions and ideas and we had a lot of testimony and a lot of emails. I think by the unanimous consent of our final report, we’ve all learned a lot. We have got to carry what we’ve learned to the other 95 legislators that we deal with. We can’t ignore this, we’ve got to find a solution. And now it’s up to all of us individually or in teams, to come up with some legislation that will solve this problem. I know there’s a few people working on it; we need to do that.”

He added that he and Loertscher are planning a joint memorial, early in the 2017 session, “basically outlining what we’ve learned in the task force. We’ll probably run that early in the session to help educate legislators on what we did,” he said. “We’d ask that everyone follow that with your own solutions, and let’s see if we can at least get this started heading down a good path.” He added, “Thanks to all who have come and testified and helped educate us. Know that we’re committed to taking care of this in one form or another.”