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U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman: New Mexico's most powerful member of Congress
ALBUQUERQUE — In an interview Friday afternoon, U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman was far from confident that major bipartisan health care reform will prevail when Congress reconvenes after its August recess.
“It may work, it may not,” Bingaman said. “It’s possible we get to September and find we can’t agree.”
Does that mean that Senate Democratic leaders would then aim for some variation on a Democrats-only approach?
“It’s possible we’d be forced to do that,” Bingaman added. But, he immediately cautioned, “I don’t know if we’d have 60 votes,” the number needed to overcome a potential Republican filibuster.
On Thursday, New Mexico’s senior senator and elite health care reform negotiator — a member of the so-called “Gang of Six” — was at the White House strategizing with President Obama over the potential for bipartisan legislation.
Bingaman, a 26-year-veteran of Congress’ upper chamber, expressed some hope that he and his fellow negotiators from the Senate Finance Committee will be able to reach a compromise. He added that the major sticking points include “this issue of affordability” and what he dubbed “bending the cost curve” downward.
In the interview at his downtown Albuquerque office — watch the interview in its entirety to the left — Bingaman reiterated his support for a public option that supporters say would drive down costs and increase the competition among plans for consumers, but he also spoke favorably on a privately run co-operative system that many say could achieve the same goals.
In a phone interview with the Albuquerque Journal’s Washington-based reporter Michael Coleman, Bingaman added that public option-less legislation wouldn’t be a deal breaker for him.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Bloomberg shortly after Bingaman’s meeting at the White House, Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the White House Office of Health Reform said that President Obama could support a privately run co-operative system provided it increased competition in the insurance market.
“We would be interested in that,” DeParle told Bloomberg.
On the costs side of the reform equation, Bingaman did inch closer to saying he’d support an alternative to the fee-for-service method by which most health care providers are currently paid — and that many critics argue is partly responsible for today’s unsustainable health care spending.
“I think the general idea is a good one,” he said, adding that moving toward what he called “bundled payments” as an alternative would constitute cost-saving progress.
“I think we need to move toward much more of this integrated heath care delivery… where you don’t really have a fee-for-service system,” Bingman said while still emphasizing that he didn’t think Congress should “mandate” such a switch.
And Bingaman also weighed in on his so-far unsuccessful push to include obesity prevention and treatment programs as part of a major health care reform bill — NMI’s Gwyneth Doland talked with him last week about that effort. In a response to critics who argue that the government shouldn’t have a role in combating obesity, Bingaman continued his push in the interview:
Well, I think frankly we’ve got this weird view in the country that if a person comes down with Type Two diabetes because of being overweight, and there’s a pretty good correlation there — I think most physicians would agree with that — and they need dialysis, that the government should step up and provide the resource of that dialysis. I agree with that. If the government is going to be involved in the far end… I don’t see why it’s inappropriate for the government to encourage healthy behavior up front.
Video courtesy of KNME. Special thanks to Kevin McDonald, Kathy Wimmer, Antony Lostetter and Benny Martinez.
