Governor Hickenlooper Helps Lead Charge Against Health Care Bill

Governor John Hickenlooper stood at the podium at the National Press Club on Tuesday with Ohio Governor John Kasich at his side. Again. The Democrat from Colorado and the Republican from Ohio have become the Jagger and Richards of the anti-Republican health care movement, playing their increasingly popular tune of, Just Don't Do It.

The two have been working together since a meeting of the nation's governors in February where the warnings about what what would happen if Obamacare were fully repealed.

They realized the power of a people from both sides of the aisle working together and started recruiting people from each party.

On Tuesday - the day Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced they would be postponing a vote on the Senate bill because they didn't even have enough votes to bring it to the floor for discussion - repeated the call for the Senate to back down. (For more information on this and other local stories, subscribe to your local Patch for breaking news alerts.)

"I hope we're able to take this un-health care bill, and put it aside, and start over," he said.

Hickenlooper said that under the Senate bill, more than 188,000 people in Colorado - many in rural parts of the state - would lose coverage.

He questions who the bill is intended to benefit, saying that the bulk of the tax benefits will go the country's wealthiest 4 million people.

"Most of them aren't asking for it," he said. "Why are we making this huge cut in what services we offer to the public?"

Hickenlooper was also asked about his efforts to lobby Senator Cory Gardner, the state's first-term, junior senator and a Republican.

"He's someone who's a very conservative Republican," Hickenlooper said. "But he doesn't think being a conservative Republican means putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk."

Hickenlooper later told The New York Times that less than one minute after the press conference he heard from Gardner and that he thinks he's listening.

Photo/video via C-SPAN