Candidate explains opposition to Medicaid expansion

I am a third-generation Montanan who graduated from Carroll College and the University of Washington Medical School, who served our country as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force and who, together with my loving wife of nearly 27 years, has been raising five children and also serving our Kalispell community through our church, schools and civic organizations. 

I have been drawn to politics due to the many issues associated with Obamacare and the unwise Medicaid expansion, both of which I strongly oppose. 

I believe the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act (Obamacare) is an offensive federal intrusion into the people’s rights of health-care self-determination and a fundamentally flawed intrusion into a major portion of our entire economy. I am frustrated and offended that the current health-care law is diverting my time and talents from the concerns of my patients and forcing me into serving the federal government as a de facto bureaucrat. 

Medicaid expansion, the spawn of Obamacare, forces the working poor of our nation into an antiquated government-run medical insurance program that has been deemed by many statistical studies to provide substandard patient outcomes. I believe Obamacare requires repeal and replacement. I believe Medicaid must not be expanded. Medicaid is in desperate need of comprehensive and fundamental reform. As one who believes in the rule of law, I believe the working poor of Montana deserve an equal opportunity to choose private health-care insurance that is supported by federal grants similar to those which the middle-class and upper middle-class families of Montana receive through the health insurance exchange.

I believe it is important to participate in civic life in the ways advocated by the Founding Fathers of our country. I firmly believe that We the People, in order to have a free and civilized society, must come together as an educated and informed people to interact through active debate and civil discourse in order to agree on goals, decide on the courses of action to achieve those goals, and have the fortitude to see them through as public laws and policies. I believe this is possible if and only if: 1) We the People can make and honor the commitment to follow through on the agreed courses of action, and 2) We the People will honor and protect the rule of law that governs us as those people. The “end justifies the means” mentality, which unfortunately seems to permeate the public discourse of the present time, is distasteful and unacceptable.

 Based upon my beliefs I have acted as a health-care policy adviser at our nation’s capital alongside many conservative congressmen to create the strategy to defeat Obamacare before it was passed into law, and afterwards to attempt to repeal and replace it with a series of laws that contain many of the same benefits it likes to claim but without the onerous intrusion into all of our personal freedoms and without the costs associated with so much bureaucracy. 

In Montana, I am active within the physician leadership of the Montana Orthopedic Society, and the Montana Medical Association advocating for the protection and promotion of patient-centered free-market health-care systems within our state. Within these organizations there has been much active debate concerning Medicaid expansion and I championed the opposition to it.

My colleague, Dr. Bukacek, in her recent letter to the editor, was incomplete in her description of all the programs that comprised HB 590. In addition to Medicaid expansion, her letter failed to mention the three significant programs that are required for our state to address the primary care “doctor shortage” that’s affecting Montana. To summarize, these programs increased the opportunities for Montanans to enter the medical profession, created the opportunity for Montana physicians to train newly graduated medical doctors within our state, and established 21st century models of medical practice that will entice them to stay in Montana and care for her citizens. 

Within the MMA, I actively participated in the debate concerning all the components of HB 590. I championed my beliefs, which are not identical as those of the bipartisan MMA. In the end the MMA leadership decided to support HB 590, while I did not. When selected by the leadership to deliver the MMA’s position publicly, I had the fortitude to do so out of respect for my organization and my belief that the physician shortage in Montana requires immediate attention. By the end of the last legislative session, the result of the civil discourse concerning the components of HB 590 was that the three essential programs that I championed were enacted into law. Medicaid expansion was defeated and I am glad it was.

In her public letter, Dr. Bukacek raised “some questions” about my position on Obamacare and Medicaid expansion while in private conversations she has called me “too good to be true.” Well, I am not too good to be true as so many in our community know personally. I am a physician, not a politician. As a citizen-legislator I will continue to guide my actions with data-driven logic, not ideology. My beliefs and experiences focus my attention on problem solving. My intentions are decided by critical analysis of the data available. I act upon my intentions decisively and with conviction.

Olszewski, a Kalispell Republican, is a candidate for Montana House                District 11.