S-R wrong on endorsement

Your recent editorial pans Idaho’s Republican legislature for refusing to expand Medicaid to 78,000 uninsured residents for less than the cost of Idaho’s current indigent care system. Yet you fail to note that if your favored candidate in the 5th Congressional District race had her way, there would be no chance to enroll the 78,000.

Nor would there be insurance coverage for the other 20 million Americans who gained coverage under Obamacare. If Cathy McMorris Rodgers had her way there would be no Obamacare.

In your primary endorsement of Cathy you wished she would “steer Republican leadership away from unproductive attacks on Planned Parenthood and the overblown ‘scandal’ of the day.” Yet somehow you concluded she was the best choice for our district.

What would it take for you to conclude that Cathy represents the same kind of divisive, hyper-partisan politics that prevents the Idaho Legislature from making a rational choice with regard to Medicaid expansion?

Unlike Cathy, Joe Pakootas is a longtime businessman. As CEO of the Confederated Colville Tribes, he turned their business enterprises around. Unlike Cathy, he would work across the aisle to find pragmatic solutions to real problems of real people.

Donald Lamp

Spokane