State reps ask for ideas at town hall

COEUR d’ALENE — Health care and education were heavily discussed Saturday during a town hall meeting hosted by Coeur d’Alene’s state representatives.

Rep. Luke Malek, R-Coeur d’Alene, and Rep. Paul Amador, R-Coeur d’Alene, met with more than 50 residents at Coeur d’Alene Fire Station 3 to provide an update on the legislative session and listen to what the public feels are the greatest issues in need of tackling. Two weeks have passed in the 2017 legislative session, with Amador telling the audience that 24 bills have been printed.

“The legislature averages 600 to 700 bills a session, so we’re right at the beginning of the process,” Amador said.

Although each representative briefly gave the audience a rundown of their committee assignments and issues they personally would like to see addressed, the audience itself was the focal point of the meeting. “We want to hear about some of the issues you want us to deal with,” Malek said.

Education was the first topic brought up by an attendee, who mentioned a suggested program to forgive the student debt of teachers working in rural areas as a potential way to address a shortage of teachers throughout the state. Malek responded by agreeing that the teacher shortage is a pressing issue, he was unsure if debt forgiveness is the answer.

“There are opportunities out there that already exist for teachers to have student debt forgiven,” Amador said. “I don’t know that it’s a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a solution to our teacher shortage.”

Following the education question, numerous members of the audience began asking questions about health care. One individual called the last legislative session in Idaho a disaster that resulted in zero progress, and asked how much time will be spent this session addressing the issue.

Malek, who handled most questions related to health care, said that it is the issue he spends the most time working on. Last session, Malek said he had a bill that would have fundamentally changed the way patients are treated in Idaho.

The bill gained traction, Malek said, but was not passed before the end of the session. However, the legislator said his bill addressed what he sees as a fundamental problem with the way health care works in the county, and why expanding Medicaid is not a solution to that problem.

“The problem with Medicaid is that it incentivizes production,” Malek said. “We treat human beings like widgets in health care — we need to keep production up to stay solvent.”

The bureaucracy intertwined in the current health care model, Malek said, intereferes with the most important aspect of health care — the doctor/patient relationship. “There are a lot of different perspectives across the state on how to fix this system,” Malek added. “But it needs to be an Idaho-driven plan.”