Repair, don’t repeal

My admiration to Rep. Steve Womack for meeting with his constituents in West Fork, even the ones who didn’t vote for him. One thing I heard him say clearly was that “the people of Arkansas sent me to Washington to get a hold of spending.” I agree. Here’s my question: How many billions of dollars will be spent destroying the Affordable Care Act only to try to rebuild it? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to fix the program already in place?

Parts of the ACA worked. Thousands of people in Arkansas got medical insurance for the first time. It’s not perfect, but it’s something, and now it appears we are about to get nothing but a suggestion that we open a savings account. A health savings account is a great idea; I have one. But my HSA will not reduce the price of insurance for my kids, and it will not make my insurance company treat me fairly. Good old “Obamacare” did both. Parts of the ACA worked because hundreds of people from the medical and insurance industries cooperated with our government to build it.

Who did not cooperate? Members of Congress like Representative Womack. They insist on destroying a huge program we already paid to build and now want to spend millions more to replace it. I believe that is money wasted, it is government spending out of control, and not what we sent him to Washington to do.

JEANMARIE MAKO

Pettigrew