Democrat Dr. Amerish “Ami” Bera is challenging GOP Rep. Dan Lungren, pictured, in California’s 3rd Congressional District, where the health care debate is a pivotal issue. Lungren is a leading foe of the Democrats’ health plan in Congress who openly questions the magnitude of the health care problem. Bera calls the legislation a “move forward” but questions whether it will pay for itself, address soaring health costs and cover enough people.
The national health care debate is coming to Galt, Fair Oaks and Ione.
Across the country, Republicans are bellicose, vowing to unseat congressional Democrats who dare to vote for President Barack Obama’s health care legislation. Democrats seem fearful.
But in the district that runs from Elk Grove to Carmichael and east to the Sierra Nevada, a Democrat is uniquely positioned to alter the terms of engagement and challenge incumbent Republican Dan Lungren over his opposition to the health care overhaul.
There may be no congressional race in the nation where health care could play a more prominent role.
Lungren, a 63-year-old lawyer and career politician, grew up with a unique view into perhaps the most elite corner of the medical world.
His father was Richard Nixon’s longtime personal physician.
Now, Lungren is a leading Republican voice denouncing the Democrats’ health care plan pending in Congress, and is openly questioning the magnitude of the health care problem.
“They want to go to a national health care system. I believe that would be completely destructive,” Lungren told me as the vote neared.
“That is not politics. That is sincere difference in beliefs.”
Lungren’s challenger is Dr. Amerish “Ami” Bera, a 45-year-old physician who is married to a physician and is making his first run for public office.
Bera served as Sacramento County’s chief medical officer and spent four years as associate dean overseeing admissions to the UC Davis Medical School, where he taught and is an internist on the medical staff.
Bera doesn’t embrace the health care legislation pending in Congress.
He was waiting for the final version to be released when we spoke the other day.
It is an expedient position, and underscores how hostile voters are about legislation emanating from Washington, particularly in California’s 3rd Congressional District, where voters have been electing Republicans for decades.
However, Bera’s doubts are fundamentally different than Lungren’s.
“It is certainly a move forward,” Bera said. He questions whether the bill would pay for itself, and worries that the legislation won’t “address the runaway costs of health care,” or ensure that enough uninsured people are covered.
A product of a public medical school, Bera has spent his career in public health, treating all patients, regardless of whether they have insurance.
He long has advocated extending care to as many people as possible, having pushed to provide care for Sacramento County’s uninsured when he was medical officer. Even now, he regularly volunteers at medical student-run free clinics around the county aimed at treating the least well off among us.
Bera, who is on leave from UC Davis while he runs for office, decries “runaway” health insurance costs that far outpace inflation in health care costs. He talks of treating patients who never would have become ill if only they could have afforded basic preventive care, and laments sending uninsured patients on their way, knowing they cannot afford follow-up care.
“The system doesn’t allow you to change your oil, but when your engine block cracks, we put in a new engine,” Bera said.
For his part, Lungren disputes the magnitude of the problem of the uninsured, saying there are 9 million to 12 million Americans without insurance nationwide.
“That is a fantasy number,” Bera scoffs.
Lungren parrots studies produced by conservative and libertarian institutes, and reports by publications such as National Review. They arrive at their estimate by discounting people who could afford insurance but opt not to buy it, and others who are illegal immigrants.
Critics of those studies call them flawed and politically motivated.
The U.S. Census Bureau, the primary source for counting the nation’s uninsured, placed the number at more than 46 million as of 2008, and not counting the millions of people laid off in 2009.
The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research reported last week that in California alone, 8.2 million people lack health insurance, a number that jumped by 2 million last year because of the recession.
California’s numbers include 1.5 million children, UCLA says.
Lungren offers solutions including health savings accounts. That would work fine for people who could afford to pay and would benefit from the tax break. The concept would be useless for the 2 million Californians out of work. Even people who could afford health savings accounts ought to be skeptical, given what became of 401(k) retirement plans in the crash.
Lungren is an articulate advocate of the conservative view of health care. But he was part of the majority when Republicans controlled all branches of government, and failed to confront the insurance industry.
It’s understandable. The insurance industry and health care professionals have been loyal Republican contributors, donating $475 million to congressional candidates over the past two decades, while Democrats received $330 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Incumbents like Lungren have an advantage in California, where gerrymandered districts all but ensure the party that holds a congressional seat will retain it.
But restless voters are angry with incumbents, and this is not a race to be dismissed lightly. Lungren squeaked by two years ago against an underfunded Democrat.
Bera doesn’t lack for money. He caught national party leaders’ attention when he out-raised Lungren in 2009, ending the year with $740,000 in the bank, to Lungren’s $527,000. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has decreed that the Bera-Lungren race is one of its targets.
Bera, who grew up in Downey and Las Palmas, is the son of a public school teacher and an engineer who emigrated here in 1957 from India.
As a candidate, he is tapping Indian Americans who strive to establish themselves in U.S. politics. No fewer than 29 people whose last name is Bera donated to him last year, not counting Janine Bera, his wife.
They are all relatives, he said.
Lungren has been through it before. His vita stretches back to 1978 when he won his first congressional race, back in his hometown of Long Beach. After a decade in Congress, he won two four-year terms as California attorney general before losing to Gray Davis for governor in 1998. He came back in 2004, winning the congressional seat formerly held by Doug Ose.
Lungren has some moves. He cleverly took it upon himself to deliver a version of the health care bill, all 2,000 pages, to public libraries in his district. He poses in front of a past version, its pages stacked high, on a YouTube video.
“Weighs about 20 pounds,” Lungren says on the video.
When he ran for re-election as attorney general in 1994, Lungren debated his foe up and down the state, even though he led by a wide margin in the polls. What a show it would be if he were to revive that tactic this year with Bera and bring the national health care debate to Elk Grove and Fair Oaks and Jackson.
Dr. Amerish “Ami” Bera
