There's a four-way race in Michigan's Sixth Congressional district, which includes Kalamazoo.
Long-time Republican Congressman Fred Upton of Saint Joseph faces Kalamazoo Democrat Jon Hoadley as well as Libertarian and Green Party candidates.
Upton has been in Congress since 1986. He and the other candidates spoke in mid-October during interviews with WGVU Public Television in Grand Rapids. The future of health care and insurance is one of the issues they approach differently. Upton says he's against any move to a government-run "single-payer" health insurance system like those in Canada and other countries.
"…Which would actually remove the private sector away from providing to insurance to folks who have an existing policy. That's just wrong. So, there are a number of things that we need to do to try and improve the system that we have today, whether it be allowing people to shop across state lines, health savings accounts, all of those things, an emphasis on preventative health care, need to be part of any mix. But the bottom line is, it also needs to be bipartisan."
But Upton's Democratic opponent, Kalamazoo State Representative Jon Hoadley, says Upton's words don't reflect his actions on Capitol Hill.
"I believe more people should have health care. Fred Upton voted to take away health care numerous times. And no amount of resolutions or platitudes after the fact will change the record of rollcall votes he took 12 times to remove protections for pre-existing conditions, offering an amendment that allowed a repeal of the Affordable Care Act to move out of the House that, frankly, would not have afforded any sort of protections and was dramatically underfunded, at best."
Hoadley, who can't run for State House again because of term limits, says the nation needs a health care system that's accessible and lowers costs, especially for prescription drugs.
Green Party candidate John Lawrence is a medical dispatcher in Kalamazoo. He supports a "Medicare-for-all" approach. But Lawrence says Democrats aren't doing a very good job selling the idea to voters.
"If you switch to a Medicare-for-all system, you're not going to switch and two weeks later the whole process is different. It would take at least three or four years; I think that was the proposal (Sen. Bernie) Sanders was pushing. It would basically have a timed transition to Medicare so that you would continue to lower the age of eligibility. And, so you would get more people in the system, and more people in the system, and it wouldn't be this overnight, oh no, chaotic, everything's changed. It would be a transition process but you'd try to do it as quick as possible."
The Libertarian in the Sixth District race is Jeff DePoy is a factory machine programmer from Berrien Center near Benton Harbor. DePoy says the Affordable Care Act is "garbage" and is unconstitutional. He says people need the freedom to make their own choices.
"The first thing we need to do is allow people to shop across state lines for their insurance. There's no reason that a healthy male or a healthy female shouldn't be able to buy insurance in Wyoming, if that's cheaper. On top of that, we need to allow people to start importing their prescription medications from Canada or Mexico. You know, they're dirt-cheap in Mexico."
More information about the candidates is available in the Kalamazoo League of Women Voters guide.
