NEMEC: For top medical care

Our community’s tradition of high quality, compassionate, low cost medical care is in jeopardy. The Hospital Board election is critically important to maintaining the high standard of consumer driven, community oriented medical care that has brought regional and national recognition, and earned the trust of our citizens over the last 50 years.

Certainly not the only but maybe the most obvious harbinger of things to come is Kootenai Health’s sudden dismissal of our entire Oncology staff, leaving many of our loved ones scrambling for cancer care, and solving it with some out of state agreement to rotate random doctors through our state of the art facility.

The Reagan Republican candidates (Pierce, Montgomery) have no background in healthcare delivery or in ensuring the continuity of our strong community hospital system. Bringing them up to speed to make the complex decisions to position our hospital and community to take advantage of federal programs, and to attract and keep strong, ethical, caring physicians here, would take 40 years of 60 hours per week to match the caliber of Dr. Neil Nemec’s concise articulate ability to do so.

Is there a place for party politics in a community hospital board? Will they make the same shoot ourselves in the foot decisions that the state Republicans made when they forewent using federal dollars to fund 95 percent of our Medicaid bills, instead choosing to use multiple millions in Idaho property tax dollars to pay for the health care of those living in poverty in our state? There is such a strong dichotomy between the Republican candidates and the non partisan candidates in this election, that your vote will radically change the way you access medical care in this community.

If you like your doctor and want them to stay here, ask them who to vote for. They will tell you Neil Nemec.

ROBIN CHISHOLM

Coeur d’Alene