MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia U.S. Senate candidate Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) met in Morgantown Wednesday to tour Mon General Hospital and discuss what they see as the need to fix what’s broken with the Affordable Care Act.
“I’m an orthopedic surgeon as well as a senator from Wyoming and Wyoming and West Virginia have a lot in common in that we’re both coal states,” Barrasso said.
Capito agreed the two can learn from each other.
“He’s from a coal mining state that has a lot of health care and we’re from a coal mining state that has a lot of health care, so we have similar issues,” she said. And, they agree on the Affordable Care Act. “It’s exceedingly unpopular. Premiums are going up, deductibles are going up, people are loosing physicians and we’re still just part of the way through.”
Barrasso said a lot of people in Wyoming have had their health insurance canceled and had to buy insurance under ACA that was more costly. He wanted to see if people in West Virginia were experiencing the same thing.
“As a physician I wanted to hear from patients as well as physicians, their experience with the health care law and what I’ve been hearing is that it’s driven up the cost of care, taken time away, the doctor’s time away from the patients and the patients don’t like that and a lot has to do with the paperwork.”
Capito and Barrasso didn’t limit their discussions to health care issues. Both West Virginia and Wyoming are dependent on the coal industry and they found common ground there as well. Capito says both states are seeing a loss of jobs because of new clean air policies.
“He’s seen that in Wyoming and we’re seeing that in West Virginia,” she said.