Congressional Candidate Barela Shows Solid Grasp of Health Care Situtation

Jon Barela is running for Congress against Rep. Martin Heinrich, who, since the early days of the health care debate has been a strong supporter of a bigger government role in health care. Of course, Heinrich supported the recently-passed health care bill.

Thankfully, this November, residents of District One will have a stark choice to make when it comes to health care. Barela outlined his concerns about health care in an excellent opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal. Among the many critiques that I and others have made regarding the legislation, I was most interested in Barela’s solutions. After all, it is one thing to stop Obama’s ill-advised expansion of government, but it is another thing to oppose Republican health care boondoggles. He lays his vision out towards the end of the article:

There is a better way to offer high quality, affordable health care in America, and it begins by discussing proposals that could win bipartisan approval, as well as the support of states, small businesses, and American families. Among other things, these include allowing for the sale of health insurance across state lines, encouraging small businesses to pool together to compete for lower insurance rates for their workers, significant tort reform to reduce the waste that is generated by junk lawsuits and defensive medical practices, and providing tax credits to individuals to use in health savings accounts.

I like what Barela says here, but there is one thing he forgot to mention. That is, ultimately America must replace its third-party-payment system when it comes to health care. Relying on employers for health insurance is just silly, but that is the way our system is set up and Obamacare only reinforces that absurd system. Hopefully, Jon Barela and what I imagine will be a significant majority in Congress come November will repeal Obamacare and go about dealing with this and other core issues.