Posted 8-16-08

No Congressional Health Insurance for Gordon

Buffalo, Wyo.— Businessman and rancher, Mark Gordon, who is a Republican running for U.S. House says he will not accept the health insurance package offered by Congress if elected. Gordon feels it is not fair for him to have taxpayers foot the bill for his insurance while small business owners and their employees have to go without insurance or only have catastrophic plans.

“As a businessman and rancher I have had to buy my own plan my whole adult life, except for a few years when I worked for Apache Corporation and I’ve seen the huge increases in cost and the huge decreases in coverage,” Gordon says. “If, as a member of Congress, I continue to buy insurance for my family and for me I will have a better grasp of what the rest of the nation’s small business owners have to deal with.”

Gordon notes that all U.S. Representatives make $169,300 each year and that places them in an upper income bracket automatically and so this is not a hindrance for any candidate or sitting member of Congress. “I hope this is something all members of the House would do, so we would be better in tune with what families face when they have to go out and buy their own health insurance, especially those who have stuck their necks out to run their own businesses. The high cost of insurance is often an incentive to work for a big company or for a governmental agency, but we have to have small business owners to keep our economy going.”

Early in this campaign Gordon put out his Wyoming Solutions, which includes his ideas on health care. Gordon believes that lowering the cost of health care is mandatory to protect America’s small business owners. In Wyoming Solutions he offers many of his ideas for bringing down the price of health care and health insurance. “I’ve seen too many people fold up shop or go into bankruptcy because they couldn’t afford health insurance and they had a major health crisis. This is just one of the many hurdles entrepreneurs face, especially in Wyoming.”