At Cory Gardner’s Greeley town hall, conversation stubbornly keys on health care
GREELEY – U.S. Sen. Gardner took the stage at the second of three town halls Tuesday to a mixture of cheers and boos and, despite efforts by his aides to encourage attendees to ask a wider variety of questions, faced many inquiries on health care.

They centered on his lack of support for single-payer care, what he’d do to prevent the disadvantaged from losing Medicaid and his reasons to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, when many his constituents don’t want him to.

One woman, a single mother with two young daughters who depend on Medicaid, asked Gardner what he will do to make sure she can afford health care, to a standing ovation from the crowd. Another man who identified himself as disabled asked Gardner why his health care proposals don’t prioritize people like him.

“I hope that we’ll have everyone involved instead of allowing the system to collapse because that’s not acceptable,” Gardner said in response to one question about health care moving forward. “… When I ran in 2014, I pledged to make sure we lowered the cost and increased the quality of health care.”

Gardner was answering questions at Greeley public charter school’s auditorium during the second of three solo town halls, his first such events in over a year.

Amid jeers and groans from the crowd, Gardner turned to large charts and graphs when asked about health care. And, when he said he wanted to stabilize the insurance market and take care of people with pre-existing conditions, one woman yelled out, “You did not vote that way!” to which the crowd responded with cheers.

Gardner advocated for transparency in health care, but the next man who took the microphone after that statement criticized the senator of the hypocrisy to advocate for transparency while he had participated in closed door meetings to help draft the proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act.

“You talk about transparency, and you went into closed doors … but you didn’t even have a woman on the panel,” said Scott McClain, to a standing ovation from the crowd.