District 4 candidates weigh in on Obamacare ruling

A physician by profession and current candidate for State Legislature District 4, Republican Ed Redd says it’s too early to tell how President Obama’s historic health care reform bill will affect the state of Utah. Redd says there are too many unknowns.

Redd says we do know that the expanded Medicaid program would be a major cost for tax payers.

“So the funding for Medicaid comes to states from the taxpayers in this state,” Redd says. “So it’s an increased tax burden on them and could possibly put in jeopardy the other programs the state has to fund. So I think it’s overall something that takes things out of our control.”

Redd says he believes there will be an increased emphasis on community health centers.

A former hospital employee now running for legislature says he has already seen some good things come out of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. But Doug Thompson, a Democrat running for State Legislature District 4 and is a former mayor of Logan, says there are features he doesn’t like in the law as well.

On KVNU’s For the People show, Thompson said there is one unheralded point that has to do with cost.

“It set up a health care cost reduction task force with only a budget of $250,000 for it. But what they’re doing is getting hospital systems like the Mayo Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare and guys in Pennsylvania, and these folks are getting together and saying ‘this is how we’re getting our costs down. How can we transfer that to a national level?'”

Thompson, who will be running against Redd in November for the District 4 representative seat, says Utah already offers quality health care at a lower cost than many other places.

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