U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper expressed frustration with the division in the U.S. Senate during a town hall Wednesday at the Powerhouse Science Center.

After a brief opening statement recognizing local elected officials and educators, the nearly 100 attendees fired away questions at the senator. Many were met with a similar response: division in the Senate prevents progress.

Resident Sally Sharp was concerned about the number of environmental laws that were waived in order to expedite the building of a border wall under the Trump presidency. She asked Hickenlooper if he would be in favor of repealing those waivers.

Hickenlooper did not answer the question about the waivers directly but said immigration is among the topics the Senate is evaluating.

“This country is a melting pot, and yet, immigration has become a bad name,” he said. “It’s been demonized, politicized and weaponized at this moment.”

He said the United States needs workers in most professions, and closing the U.S. border hinders the ability for employers to find labor. In 2022, nearly 50 million workers quit their jobs in the United States, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We have unbelievable needs in agriculture, tourism and manufacturing,” Hickenlooper said.

Yet, he said borders must be respected, and businesses should not be paying workers under the table for undocumented labor.

He supports an easier pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but recognized both parties gravitate toward extreme agendas; if candidates come out with moderate platforms, they get attacked in their own primary elections.

He said issues like climate change, immigration and gun rights have turned into “fundraising tools,” saying politicians often come down on the extreme side of those issues because they know it will raise money for their campaign.

Karen Zink, nurse practitioner for Southwest Women’s Health Associates, asked how Hickenlooper could help rural communities like Durango that have hospitals that no longer offer tubal ligations – the female sterilization procedure known as getting one’s tubes tied – because of religious beliefs.

“Over 60% of our hospitals in Colorado are Catholic,” she said. “They are now taking a stand against tubal ligations for any woman, period. However, they take state and federal funding.”

It wasn’t the first time Zink has raised the issue with elected officials. During a May forum with Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, she asked a similar question. In April, Mercy Hospital stopped offering female sterilization. Centura Health, Mercy’s parent company, said the procedure doesn’t align with its Catholic values.

Hickenlooper said lawmakers need to figure out how have a discussion with Pope Francis, because the church isn’t going to change its values without his blessing. He said Democratic senators have looked for someone who could meet with the pope to discuss issues of women’s reproductive health.

From a lawmaker standpoint, he said the Senate is too divided on any issue to get a bill passed.

“I shouldn’t say this but I will: We lost too many elections,” he said.

He said the Democrat’s biggest loss was the 2016 presidential election that gave former President Donald Trump the ability to nominate three U.S. Supreme Court justices during his term. That created a conservative super majority on the court and paved the way for a 5-to-4 vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“We should have never lost that election in 2016, and I take my share of the blame,” Hickenlooper said. “It created an era where its going to take a while to process those appointments, and we’re going to have to win some elections to regain many rights that we’re losing now.”

Durango resident Ellen Stein asked Hickenlooper whether universal health care is a possibility. She shared her story about battling osteoporosis and being denied prescribed medication by two different insurance companies.

“My doctor prescribed this medication to me because it has 20 years of efficacy and evidence to its benefit,” she said.

She said her insurance company is pushing her to take a medication that was not prescribed by her doctor. She asked what the vision was for universal health care and if there is a way to get rid of the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on health care.

Hickenlooper again said Democratic lawmakers do not have the votes and said it is an idea that got weaponized by conservative politicians. He called out pharmaceutical companies for making drugs for relatively rare diseases outrageously expensive.

“They’re starting to abandon the best cancer drugs that we know (of) and have worked for 20 years,” he said. “Now, suddenly, those supply chains are having shortages.”

He said there have been positive changes to the medical industry such as the capping of insulin at $35.

tbrown@durangoherald.com