Republican Congressional Candidate Jon Barela

‘You’re never going to have a situation where everybody agrees on the right approach to these things,’ Rep. Martin Heinrich said. ‘There’s just too much diversity of thought.’

On the same day that U.S. Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., talked with medical professionals at the University of New Mexico about Saturday’s historic House vote in favor of health insurance reform, his likely Republican opponent, Jon Barela, took to the radio waves to criticize the measure and offer his own solutions.

“I’m not a big fan of the health care bill that passed on Saturday night,” Barela said during a radio interview with Bob Clark on 770KKOB in Albuquerque on Monday morning. ”It creates yet another massive new bureaucracy and a government program.”

Barela said he fears the public option included in the House version will make it difficult for private insurance companies to compete.

“There will be fewer private choices, there will be less competition, more government. I think you’ll see doctors fleeing the profession (and) that will lead to accessibility issues,” Barela said.

Rep. Martin Heinrich talks to reporters at UNM on Monday

But at least some of the medical staff at UNM Hospital were thanking Heinrich for his support of the House measure.

Heinrich told them the national debate, on what will clearly be a top campaign issue, is “a great process that brought together a lot of people who care about different things.”

“I think the most important thing is that we keep the momentum up and we get this done this year,” Heinrich said. “We can not afford to let the current broken system undermine our economy.”

‘Enough is enough’

Barela said he’s concerned about the costs of medical care ballooning — insisting the bill will raise taxes $500 million and gut Medicare by another $500 million. He said he believes, if the plan is adopted by the Senate, care will have to be rationed.

“These folks have the gall to call it revenue neutral. It will only be revenue neutral if taxes are dramatically raised, care is rationed, medicare is gutted, new mandates on individuals are enacted, or all of the above. That’s what’s going to happen,” Barela said. “We’re going to be adding $1.2 trillion of spending over the 10 years with this piece of legislation. At some point we have to say enough is enough.”

Barlea said he’d prefer to make health care affordable through private means, and he’s worried that the legislative mandates included in the plan are too “onerous” on businesses operating in New Mexico.

“In a time of 10.2 percent unemployment, the last thing we need to do is impose new mandates on small business people,” Barlea said.

He said fines on businesses and individuals are “simply not an acceptable way of growing the economy.”

“You grow the economy by getting off the back of small businesses,” Barela said.

Heinrich, on the other hand, said provisions in the bill that provide employer-based insurance “don’t even kick in until you hit a payroll of $500,000.”

“Most of the small businesses I’ve talked to are in that range of having $100,000 to $500,000 in terms of their payroll. A lot of them can’t afford to provide insurance right now. And they would love to,” Heinrich said. “It’s the affordability credits and the tax credits in this legislation that are going to allow those people to provide insurance, for the first time, sometimes to people who’ve lost it in their business.”

“There a lot of provisions for small business that a really going to help in this legislation,” Heinrich said. “It’s the same approach for the self employed. It will allow a kind of pool-buying approach to be availalble to self employeed and small businesses. Currently, if you’re in a big business versus a small business you get a much better rate in your insurance, and that’s because you have access to a much bigger pool. That kind of pooling will now be available for small businesses and self employed.”

Targeted solutions and real tort reform

Barlea is offering what he calls “targeted solutions,” not a “wholesale dismantling of our health-care system.”

“We’ve been vicitims of our own success in many respects. We have the best doctors, the best nurses, the best health-care providers,” Barlea said.

He suggests that health care insurance — like auto and life insurance — should be able to be purchased across state lines. And he wants tort reform.

Barlea, who currently does not have a Republican primary opponent in 2010, told Clark that he’d like to see the same tax treatment given to individuals and the self employed that large employers get.

“We need to allow tax credits of $2,000 per person at least. I would like to see $2,500 per person and $6,000 per family, so they can invest in portable health saving accounts,” Barlea said.

Barela said he wants incentives for primary care physicans who provide preventive medicine and wants to develop a system for rewarding good health choices.

“That could be for physicians and individuals,” Barlea said.

Here’s what Barela said about tort reform:

“In 2003, Christus Health Care spent $100 million on insurance defense payments. Now they have this tort reform law enacted in Texas, and in 2008 the same organization spent only $2.3 million on insurance defense payments. Most of that other $98 million went to expand health care services in primarily low-income areas of Texas,” Barlea said. “That’s an opportunity cost that would be better reinvested into really providing affordable health care and expanding those services to people who people who really need it.”

But in terms of tort reform, Heinrich told NMPolitics.net after his meeting at UNM that “provisions regarding certificate of merit — the Gordon Amendments — were included.”

“There was a lot of consensus around those,” Heinrich said. “I think what you won’t see are some of the more extreme amendments that have not frankly brought down costs in the states were they’ve been implemented.”

Representatives exempt themselves from plan

Responding to Barela’s criticism about House members exempting themselves from their own health care reform bill, Heinrich said he’d be happy “to take the public insurance option that’s in this legislation tomorrow.”

“If we can keep it in the bill I’ll be happy to sign up for it, but I don’t think I should say to all my colleagues that they should necessarily make that same choice,” Heinrich said.  ”It really should be up to each individual consumer. I think this is about choice, so you should be able enroll in whichever plan you want.”

In the end, what promises to be a key issue in next year’s congressional races across the country comes down to a philosphical difference in opinions.

Heinrich says the bill “maintain(s) the things that work and it fixes the things that currently aren’t working.”

“We had to act,” Heinrich said. “It’s so important and it impacts people’s lives directly, so every time you move something over here there’s somebody over there who’s going to be impacted either in a positive or negative way.”

“This is complicated issue,” Heinrich said. “Everybody’s for health care, but to build the kind of consensus you need to move forward with something is not an easy endeavor. You’re never going to have a situation where everybody agrees on the right approach to these things. There’s just too much diversity of thought.”

Barela told the radio audience he has a totally different philosphy about how government should operate.

“The people who are running the show in D.C. believe in bigger government, more taxes, less freedom. I have a totally different philosophy about how government should operate,” he said. “I believe in limited government, fewer taxes and more freedom for people.  I believe in ownership and opportunity… for this country, not one that is based on deference and dependency — which is exactly what Washington has created.”

St. Cyr is a contributing writer for this site and a reporter at 770KKOB.com. He can be reached at peter.stcyr@gmail.com.