(Des Moines) State Senator Amanda Ragan of Mason City has been appointed to serve as a member of the Midwestern Legislative Conference (MLC) Health and Human Services Committee for 2013-2014.
“Creating the conditions that foster strong families and successful children is essential to Iowa’s continued growth,” said Ragan, the chair of the Iowa Senate’s Human Resources Committee. “My goal is to take the best ideas from around the region and introduce them to Iowans. By learning from each other’s successes and mistakes we can all improve the work we do.”
The committee is made up of legislators from the MLC’s 11 member states and four affiliate Canadian provinces: Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, North Dakota, Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, South Dakota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
The MLC Health and Human Services Committee is a forum where legislators can have frank conversations about what policies and programs have worked best in addressing critical social policy issues. The committee has studied a variety of key areas, including: managed care, access to health care for rural consumers, health care quality, mental illness, and health care cost-management.
Senator Ragan represents Franklin, Butler, and Cerro Gordo counties in the Iowa Senate. In addition to her role on the Human Resources Committee, she is also an Assistant Majority Leader and serves on five other committees and subcommittees. “I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have these open, non-partisan conversations between legislators,” said Ragan, “and I look forward to learning from the experiences of our neighbor states and provinces.”
