Keep ACA, expand

In her Nov. 8 column, “It’s time to start over on health insurance,” Sue Lani Madsen, like most Republicans today, likes to pick and choose her history dates. Some of the history she forgot goes back to the early 1900s when the American Medical Association gained power at the local, state and national levels.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt and his Progressive Party campaigned for compulsory health insurance. In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt and, in 1945, President Harry Truman tried to pass health care but were blocked by the AMA. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law Medicare and Medicaid. In 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Health Maintenance Organization Act. President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010.

With special interests like the AMA and other corporations that are buying our elected officials, millionaires who can outspend any candidate, political action committees that beg big money donors and the dark money that comes with it, we cannot afford to start over. We need to continue to expand and fine tune our health care options that took our grandfathers, our fathers and us more than 100 years to achieve.

Lawrence Schuchart

Spokane