Udall talks health care on Clovis visit

CLOVIS - U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is on a visit through eastern New Mexico. He is scheduled to tour Cannon Air Force Base today, and met with Clovis community leaders Wednesday night at the Norman and Vi Petty Rock and Roll Museum.

Udall, a former state attorney general and member of the House of Representatives, is in his second term as senator.

What brings you here?

I'm here because I love Clovis. I just wanted to visit with people, as you can see from what we did here, on the things that are going on in Washington. We want to protect health care, as I talked about. There's a prohibition on lifetime (coverage) limits. We want that to stay. We don't want them to be able to put a lifetime limit on it. We don't want them to have preexisting conditions that prevent people from getting health care. We want those kids to be able to stay on their parents' policies until the age of 26. There's a lot of health care issues I wanted to visit on. Right now, in Washington, they're about ready to repeal a health care law and it would do all of those bad things.

Continuing with that ... consider the gridlock in D.C., Republicans' consistent efforts at repealing the Affordable Care Act, their difficulties so far getting something they can pass via reconciliation (requiring only 50 votes) and Democrats' willingness to filibuster. Is there a chance any meaningful health care legislation gets done?

We want to work with them in a bipartisan way to improve upon the Affordable Care Act. We've made a number of proposals. We're saying, "If you want to bring down the costs of prescription drugs, we're ready to work with you. If you want to work with us on bringing down the overall costs to health care, we're willing to work with you. If you want to work with us on bringing down premiums, we're willing to work with you." They have not said they're ready to do that, but we and I are ready to step forward. They're doing this bill that you're talking about totally with Republican votes, which is completely opposite of the way we did the Affordable Care Act. We had an open process, their process is behind closed doors. Our process had 141 Republican amendments that were accepted, so we had an open process and we accepted amendments. We took two years. They're doing it overnight in closed-door, secret meetings. It's a pretty bad process.

You said you wanted to work to improve the Affordable Care Act, which seems like an important distinction. Do you think you can approach a position of what you can do to improve the American Health Care Act?

I don't think so. What I view this as, the president is pushing this, he's saying, "Just repeal." This is Trumpcare, and Trumpcare's going to be very bad for America, and particularly bad for New Mexico.

Speaking of President Trump, have you had an opportunity to meet with him on anything?

We've told him, "We want to work with you on infrastructure." Democrats have put a proposal together on infrastructure. There couldn't be anything people in New Mexico would like better than a bipartisan infrastructure bill - build roads, renovate schools, build bridges, things like that. You put people to work, help communities, help small businesses.