NM reaction
Sens. Udall and Heinrich urge fixes for Obamacare
WASHINGTON — With the Senate effort to repeal or replace Obamacare seemingly dead — at least for now — New Mexico’s U.S. senators on Tuesday urged their Republican colleagues to find ways to fix the 7-year-old health care law rather than scrap it.
“If you ask New Mexicans right now what’s the problem with the health care … many of them are going to say their policies are too expensive and we need to control costs,” Udall said in a conference call with New Mexico reporters. “I think that’s absolutely true. Why don’t we focus our work on that? We need to make prescription drugs more affordable and prices more transparent. Medicare and other programs should negotiate the prices of prescription drugs, and we need to make sure there are more (health care) choices in rural communities.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich, also a Democrat, told reporters in the U.S. Capitol that with the socalled Trumpcare bill falling apart in the Senate, “We have two choices in front of us: We can either take one more crack at trying to sabotage the market (by passing the Republican bill) … or we can go back to regular order, draft a bill in committee, have hearings and find ways to stabilize the market.”
Defections within the GOP ranks on the Senate GOP health bill this week have made it impossible to get the legislation passed in its current form.
WILSON AIDE: Bryce Dustman, a longtime chief of staff for Heather Wilson when she represented Albuquerque in the U.S. House, has taken on the same role now that she is secretary of the Air Force.
The Pentagon announced that Dustman, a Missouri native, would serve as Wilson’s chief of staff at the Air Force, effective immediately. Dustman ran Wilson’s Capitol Hill office from 2001 to 2009. He had been serving as special assistant to Commissioner Joe Mohorovic of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission before Wilson brought him back into her camp. Wilson was sworn in to her new job in May.
RADIATION VICTIMS: Rep. Ben Ray Luján’s fight to win compensation for those affected by nuclear testing during the Cold War got a boost last week when the House voted unanimously to approve an amendment saying that the federal government should compensate them.
It’s a small victory — no money is contained in the amendment — but it keeps Congress on the record as saying the compensation should happen. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was expanded 17 years ago to include not only miners and workers, but those living downwind of the blasts and others who suffered the effects of uranium mining and nuclear testing.
Luján is also pushing legislation for actual compensation.