Rep. Mike Pompeo addresses a small group at Gerrard's Restaurant in Goddard. Goddard Mayor Marcey Gregory, second from right, pressed Pompeo over the national health care law that he's vowed to work to repeal.
Saying she had benefited as both a small-business owner and a mother, Goddard Mayor Marcey Gregory today pressed Rep. Mike Pompeo to change his view that Congress should completely repeal the national health care law.
Pompeo didn’t back off from his long-held stance that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — which he and other Republicans derisively call “Obamacare” — should be repealed in its entirety.
He did, however, express some support for safeguards against insurance companies denying people coverage.
The exchange took place at Gerrard’s Restaurant in Goddard, where Pompeo made a whistle stop as part of a three-day campaign kickoff swing through the 4th District.
Pompeo timed the kickoff tour to coincide with the one-year-anniversary of his 2010 election when a Republican wave — spurred in part by voter unrest over the health-care law — returned control of the House to the GOP.
Gregory, who has run for state Legislature and Sedgwick County Commission as a Democrat, told Pompeo that her business — the First Gear running store in Wichita Old Town — has benefited from employer tax credits in the Affordable Care Act.
“In my business, we pay 100 percent of the premiums of all of our employees,” Gregory said. “And this is the first time we’ve ever gotten tax credit for doing that.”
She also said she’s taken advantage of a provision allowing parents to cover their children until age 26.
“I’ve got a 23-year-old son that I’m able to keep on my health-insurance policy,” she said. “So I think there are good portions of it that we need to be able to hold on to and maybe just discard the bad.”
Pompeo conceded there are “laudable goals” in the bill, but added “I can’t imagine keeping any of it.” Read More