Health care main focus in congressional race

By Cheyene Miller

[email protected]

Unlike the 2014 Kentucky Senate race that features a politician with 30 years of experience in the federal government, the race for Kentucky’s 6th district seat in the House of Representatives features two faces that are relatively new to national politics.

Republican Rep. Andy Barr was elected to Congress in 2012, after his second attempt to beat out former Rep. Ben Chandler was successful.  Barr, a Lexington native and graduate of the UK College of Law, currently serves on the House Committee on Financial Services.

His Democratic opponent, Elisabeth Jensen, has the chance to win her first attempt at becoming an elected official.  According to her campaign website, the Indiana native is a former executive with Disney Consumer Products, and currently serves as the president and executive director of Race For Education, a non-profit founded by Jensen that provides financial aid, academic development programs and financial literacy training.

The two candidates squared off in a debate at Eastern Kentucky University Monday night, focusing on issues like the minimum wage.

Jensen advocated a raise in the minimum wage, saying “it’s the quickest way to get money in the pockets of our hard working families,” according to a report from WKYT.

Barr supports keeping the minimum wage at $7.25 an hour and $2.13 an hour for tipped workers, but said that he supports investments in finding ways for the government to support economic growth, which would cause the private sector to lift wages on its own, according to WKYT.

A Bluegrass Poll published in August showed that 55 percent of respondents in Kentucky supported raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

On the issue of health care, Barr sides with his Republican allies in Congress.  He has supported a full repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, publicly calling it a 2,700-page job destroyer during his 2012 campaign.  Jensen has taken a different strategy than most Democrats in this midterm election in that she publicly supports the ACA and Kynect, Kentucky’s online health insurance market place established under the law.

The Huffington Post even named Jensen as one of the few Democrats who aren’t running away, but rather are embracing the ACA in their campaigns.

A discussion on health care was one of the central points for the candidates during their televised debate on KET’s “Kentucky Tonight.”

Barr was critical of the ACA, saying that it had caused 280,000 Kentuckians to lose their health insurance and led to a hike in premium costs.

“It’s called the Affordable Care Act but it’s anything but affordable,” said Barr, who added that market-based legislation, like his Saving Lives, Saving Costs Act introduced earlier this year were the solution to America’s health care woes.

Jensen criticized the proposed legislation, saying that it was “basically a medical malpractice protection lawsuit bill.”

Jensen went on to praise Gov. Steve Beshear for his efforts in implementing Kynect.

“Our governor stepped forward and set up this exchange, and now we have more than half a million people enrolled,” said Jensen, who said that it was time for opponents of the ACA to stop fighting the law.  “It’s not going to get repealed.  We have too many people enrolled; it’s working in too many states across the country.”

Barr responded by saying that over 80 percent of the Kynect enrollees are on Medicaid rather than private insurance, and many of these were previously eligible for Medicaid.

“What we learned from the VA scandal is that access to a waiting line is not access to health care,” Barr said.

One issue that has showed up in the debate and in the campaigns is one that the candidates actually agree on – term limits.  According to his campaign website, Barr proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would that would limit Congressmen to six consecutive terms and Senators to two consecutive terms. Jensen has publicly stated that she was open to limiting Congressmen and Senators to three or four terms.

If elected, Jensen will become the first female Democrat to ever represent Kentucky in the Congress, while Barr will be entering his second term as a Congressman.