Jessica Dryer

West Fargo

A big Republican talking point is “run government like a business.” Many people buy into this idea, but I haven’t seen any commitment to it from our Republican leaders.

Recently, there have been a slew of health care bills brought forward with no input from health care providers, businesses, insurance companies, long-term care providers or hospital associations. This is neither good government nor good business. For example, I’m an accountant. If we decided to radically overhaul our accounting software, I can tell you what we wouldn’t do: We wouldn’t “repeal” our software before having a replacement that included input from all our stakeholders. What would we do in the mean time? Go back to pencil and paper and wing it?

With healthcare, why aren’t we having bipartisan committee hearings that are open to the public with participation from doctors’ associations, hospital associations, long-term care providers, insurance companies and advocates for patients? These are the folks who deal with healthcare every day. Why aren’t we listening to them? It’s like replacing our accounting software with something the CEO saw on a shelf at the dollar store!

Maybe Senator Hoeven and Representative Kevin Cramer should listen more to their own talking points of “running government like business.” Or maybe North Dakotans should realize these guys are really just all talk and no walk.