State Senator Charles Scott of Casper is facing a challenge from veteran Representative Bob Brechtel. The two are competing in the Senate District 30 Republican Primary.
Brechtel is a self proclaimed conservative candidate who says he is running against Scott because the Senator has been reluctant to support what Brechtel calls core Republican issues. As an example, Brechtel is still upset that Scott, who chairs the Senate Health and Labor Committee, failed to consider a bill of Brechtel’s that would require doctors to offer women considering an abortion, an ultrasound and more information about the process.
“To provide that information to women if they wanted it. The abortion industry in this state have not been very truthful about what’s going on. Women who have had abortions, many of them have been damaged one way or another. ”
Scott says he too is a conservative, but he adds that he does not support the causes that Brechtel does.
“They are basically saying I don’t agree with their extreme views, so I’m therefore against the whole thing. ”
The two differ strongly on the role government should play in health care. Brechtel says health care should be left up to the private sector.
“If you look back over the last 40 to 50 years, government has been continually trying to address problems in health care and throughout that time the cost of health care has increased by about 5,400 percent. ”
But Scott disagrees.
“We need the Medicaid program that’s how the average citizen goes to the nursing home when they have to. And it takes care of a lot of the people with developmental disabilities. That’s unreasonably extreme. ”
Scott is critical of Brechtel for failing to support his healthy frontiers program, which was intended to keep Medicaid costs down. Brechtel says it’s better to have the marketplace handle health care issues. The two are facing off in Tuesday's Republican primary.