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She’s proud to have voted to pass Obamacare. He wants to repeal it. You get to cast your ballot for one of them.
She’s Rosa DeLauro (at left in the above photo), a Democrat who has represented this area in Congress for 22 years.
He’s Wayne Winsley (at right), a motivational speaker and former radio talk-show host who’s running as a Republican this fall to seek to unseat her in the Nov. 6 general election.
From the President Obama’s Affordable Care Act to Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare, they give voters a genuine choice, two different perspectives on how to approach health care.
Got two minutes for a voter speed date? DeLauro and Winsley spent time with the Independent recently — she in her Elm Street office, he a half-block away at the offices the Independent shares with the Spanish-language newspaper La Voz Hispana — answering questions about where they stand on real issues they’d face next year if voters elect them.
Check out their answers on the health care questions and watch some video mash-ups (for more detailed responses) below, to see who stands where you stand.
1. Repeal Obamacare?
• Winsley said he’d join a Republican move to cancel the Affordable Care Act. “A good concept done very badly,” he said. “I would vote to repeal it and replace it with something better.”
• DeLauro would vote against repeal. “It’s one of the proudest votes I’ve ever cast,” she said, “a transformative piece of legislation” on the order of Social Security or Medicare. Highlights for her: An end to gender ratings (charging women more for the same treatments) and lifetime coverage caps; subsidies to small-business for employee coverage; banning insurance denials for pre-existing conditions (including for women who had C sections or suffered domestic violence); coverage for preventive services like breast cancer and gestational diabetes coverage.
2. Undo The Mandate?
• DeLauro supports the law’s requirement that all people buy insurance. Otherwise, people without insurance go the emergency room when they get sick — and stick the rest of taxpayers with a bigger bill, she argued. “Why should everybody else pick up their health care tab? That really isn’t fair.”
• Winsley would repeal the mandate. He acknowledged the cost passed on by the uninsured using emergency rooms: “As a compassionate society we have the means to do that. That’s the price of freedom. … I don’t believe the federal government should ever in any instance be given the power to tell the American people by fiscal force that they have to buy a product.”
3. De-Fund Planned Parenthood?
• “All of Planned Parenthood? No,” Winsley stated. But, he said, “I don’t agree with the federal government funding abortion.”
• DeLauro: Forget about it. “No federal dollars are utilized for abortion. Anyone who says that that’s the case with Planned Parenthood is mistaken.”
4. Private Medicare Accounts?
• DeLauro would vote no. She called Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposal to have future Medicare recipients receive vouchers to purchase private insurance a way of charging seniors more for care and in effect “end the Medicare guarantee” that has covered 98 percent of Americans over 65. She cited research estimating that the average senior would pay $6,400 more out of pocket under the plan. (Click here to read about the report she’s citing. Click here for an independent analysis of the claim.) DeLauro called for “strengthening” Medicare, which she said Obamacare does in part by eliminating co-pays for colonoscopies and mammograms, thereby cutting costs through prevention.
(Read about the details of Ryan’s plan in this article.)
• Winsley would vote yes on some form of the plan. He said he supports the basic concept of maintaining the status quo for people currently 55 years and older, then introducing the private investment accounts for people at some younger threshold. “We must rejuvenate Medicare and Social Security so that they protect today’s seniors and they protect our young folks coming up,” he said. “If we don’t fix it, people are not going to have access to the care they have now.”
5. Ban Abortion In Case Of Incest Or Rape Or Threat To Mother’s Health?
Both candidates said they would not vote for this proposal, a plank of the Republican national platform and advocated by, among others, Reps. Todd Akin and Paul Ryan.
If you have time for a more detailed look at candidates and their positions, check out this tool from an outfit called ElectNext:
And check out Project Vote Smart’s matching game.