Earlier this week, an article in The Press titled "Seed Grant Sprouts Clinic" with a Brian Walker byline began with this statement: "The nonprofit health center,formerly named Dirne Community Health Center, will receive a $650,000 seed grant from the Federal Bureau of Primary Health Care to start clinics in those areas." Embedded later in the article was this statement: "Malek said the grant and new clinics are not the result of Obamacare or Idaho's health insurance marketplace."

(Editor's Note: The Press published a correction Thursday. Malek did not say funding was unattached to Obamacare. The error was a reporter misunderstanding).

Though the grant funds awarded to Heritage are indeed not linked to Your Health Idaho (the Idaho health insurance exchange), it is not true that the funds are not the result of "Obamacare." One need only visit the website of the Department of Health and Human Services to discover that the $650,000 grant recently awarded to Heritage Health is part of $150 million in grants made available directly by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The Nov. 7 press release by HHS clearly lists all grant recipients and the source of the funds, and I applaud The Press for their timely acknowledgement of the error.

It is sad that the ACA has become so politicized, and the current executive branch so demonized that it is impossible for good public policy to be attributed to either. The ACA includes more than $11 billion in funds to support the expansion of community health centers. These funds follow nearly $2 billion made available to community health centers under the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (also called Obama's stimulus).

You may not like President Obama or many of the policies that he stands for, but when you fail to recognize that there are parts of Obamacare that have a positive impact on everyone in this community, you are placing raw ideology above the good of your friends, family and neighbors. It is time to put aside the fear of change and the dislike for this president and look at the ACA through a new lens. Simply putting up barriers and writing off a law you don't like because it is associated with a president you mistrust does not solve the problems we face as a society, nor fix the law to better serve us as a nation.

Though the federal grants will clearly help Heritage Health and other community health centers to expand and serve a broader segment of our communities, it is obvious that these centers could be better positioned to operate in the future if they could get ongoing reimbursement for a higher percentage of the services they provide. This could happen if the Idaho legislature would simply accept the federal expansion of Medicaid.

A report released by George Washington University clearly underscores this opinion through analysis of the impact of state policies on community health centers such as Heritage Health. The Governor and his task force have thoroughly researched the benefits and consequences and concluded that the program would be highly beneficial and save the state money. Why, then, is our legislature rejecting it? Why is it ideologically unacceptable to expand Medicaid in Idaho while simultaneously rejoicing federal grants stemming from the same law supported and administered by the same administration?

Jerry Wallace is a Kootenai County resident.