Idaho has the fourth-highest rate of uninsured children in the country. Not somewhere else. Here. And yet Jim Risch has voted against expanding healthcare coverage every time he’s had the chance.
I’ve spent the last year driving across this state. Coeur d’Alene to Bear Lake, Weiser to Blackfoot. I’ve sat in libraries and living rooms and listened to people tell me what keeps them up at night. It isn’t abstract. A small farmer tells me she has been putting off shoulder surgery for years because she can’t afford it. A self-employed electrician tells me he’s one bad diagnosis away from losing everything he’s built. A woman in Challis told me she followed the ambulance with her husband to Idaho Falls, since there were no options closer to home.
These aren’t edge cases. This is Idaho.
Rural hospitals across our state are under siege. Seventeen percent of rural hospitals nationwide are at risk of closure, and Idaho communities are not exempt. In fact, the number of Idaho hospitals likely to close has grown from seven to 10 due to the continued cuts at the state and federal levels. When a rural hospital closes, it doesn’t just eliminate jobs; it eliminates the possibility of timely emergency care, prenatal care, and mental health services. People die from the distance they must travel for care.
The mental health piece is especially brutal. Idaho consistently ranks among the worst states for mental health access. There simply aren’t enough providers, and what exists is priced out of reach for working families, and often not covered.
Meanwhile, the self-employed—farmers, independent contractors, small business owners—face a healthcare market designed for large employers. They pay full freight for coverage that still leaves them exposed, or they go without and gamble. That’s not freedom. That’s a rigged system.
Medicare for All completely changes this equation. A single-payer system covers every American: employed, self-employed, between jobs, retired. It eliminates premiums, deductibles, and the billing complexity that drains time and money from providers and patients alike. Rural hospitals gain a stable funding source instead of chasing reimbursements from a patchwork of private insurers. Mental health services get covered. Nobody goes without because they can’t afford the copay.
This is not a radical idea. It is the standard in every peer nation on earth. What is radical is continuing to let Idahoans go without care so that insurance companies can protect their margins.
Our GOP representatives voted against the Affordable Care Act. They voted against Medicaid expansion. They voted against allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. The record is not ambiguous. The people who are supposed to represent us have consistently chosen the insurance industry over Idaho families, and they will continue to do so.
It’s time for a change. Healthcare can’t wait, and neither can we.
David Roth represents Idaho as the state committeeman to the Democratic National Committee.