ATLANTA — For Republican primary voters the question next year will be which candidate’s approach to Obamacare makes the most sense.
That’s because a debate is raging among most of the declared Senate candidates over how best to rid Americans of what they consider the flaws of the national health care law named for President Barack Obama.
Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah has been attacked by Rep. Paul Broun of Athens over legislation Kingston is sponsoring that would require the president and his appointees be covered by the law and that exemptions for small businesses apply to those with up to 500 employees, the cutoff point for the Small Business Administration as compared to the 50-worker threshold in the Affordable Care Act.
Broun, who is a physician, says Kingston’s bill amounts to a sellout.
“Georgians don’t want to fix Obamacare, they want to repeal Obamacare in full. Unlike Kingston’s bill which would merely attempt to fix the flawed healthcare law, Dr. Broun has introduced legislation that would repeal and replace Obamacare,” Broun’s campaign said in a news release Friday.
Kingston, the longest-serving congressman in Georgia’s delegation, argues that as long as a Democratic majority controls the Senate, dismantling the law piece by piece is the most viable approach.
“A lot of conservatives say no, just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own. But I don’t think that’s always the responsible thing to do. I think we need to be looking for things that improve healthcare overall for all of us,” he said.
Broun has even produced a commercial attacking Kingston about the issue. The attack may also be motivated by the fact that Kingston is ahead in recent polls and in fundraising.
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Karen Handel has run ads blasting the members of Congress for exempting themselves from the law, a thinly veiled attack at Kingston, Broun and Phil Gingrey of Marietta, the other congressman in the GOP Senate primary and also a physician.
Gingrey has responded by vowing to serve just one term in the Senate if Obamacare isn’t repealed.
Polls consistently show that Republicans want to see the law rolled back. So, it’s likely the primary opponents will continue to try to outdo each other in efforts to use the sweeping health care law as a political weapon.
And the Georgia Republican Party is using it as well by goading Democratic candidate Michelle Nunn in an effort to tie her to the unpopular initiative.
“In Georgia, liberal senate candidate Michelle Nunn and the Democratic Party are avoiding the topic of Obamacare like the plague,” the party said in a press release Monday.
For her part, Nunn spent the last week touring the state to talk about small-business job creation.
And Branko Radulovacki, the physician running in the Democratic primary against Nunn and former legislator Steen Miles, is embracing Obamacare. He spent Friday in a demonstration at Grady Hospital in Atlanta with union groups calling for Georgia to expand its Medicaid program as part of Obamacare.
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