Colleen Hinds, House District 13 candidate, is a registered nurse who spent decades practicing her profession. She has an acute understanding of the profound necessity of affordable, quality health care for all.

Now that ballots are on the near horizon, it’s time to carefully consider specific issues, one of them being health care. Under the leadership of Governor Steve Bullock, Medicaid Expansion got instituted in Montana. The expansion took a lot of heat off of our rural hospitals. It provided the opportunity for affordable, quality health care to all Montanans who qualified, including numerous members of our Sanders County community. Our own Clark Fork Valley Hospital could have been in a fair amount of peril had the expansion failed.

Newborns, the elderly, and everyone in between benefited from the Medicaid Expansion, which is part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Beyond the expansion, the ACA provides that insurance companies cannot deny health care coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The ACA clearly has helped millions of people, including many of us here in Sanders County. Is it perfect? No, but it has been a good start in fixing an expensive, broken system.

Colleen is in full support of keeping Medicaid Expansion viable in our community. Through her decades long career, she has been dedicated to helping all people. We should carefully consider electing someone who actually knows how to care. She did it well in one arena, as a nurse. Let’s use her vast experience to now serve our community in the legislative arena.

Deb Achatz, Trout Creek