Burr, Hagan disagree on health care

RALEIGH (AP) - North Carolina's senators preached gloom yesterday about the future of U.S. health care while offering different tactics on how to prevent their grim predictions from coming true.

Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan and Republican Sen. Richard Burr appeared on the same stage in Raleigh, pitching to an audience of agriculture leaders their thoughts on health care.

They differ on what has become a major flashpoint in the health-care debate. Hagan supports a government-backed insurance option that would allow the uninsured access to care, but Burr opposes such government involvement.

Hagan cited the rising cost of insurance and the millions who don't have access to care, saying that North Carolina is a glaring example of the need for urgent reform.

"The exploding costs of health care have put our nation's economic security at risk -- not just in the long term, but in the short term," Hagan said. "Simply put, I don't think we can afford inaction."

Though Hagan vowed that she would oppose any health-care bill that would add to the nation's deficit, Burr questioned why legislators were considering spending more on health care when the nation spends so much on care already.

"Kay and I agree on one thing: It's unsustainable in its current fashion," Burr said. "We've got to do health-care reform. But I want to warn you tonight: Doing the wrong thing will mean that our children and our grandchildren will spend a generation trying to figure out how to reverse what we've done."

Burr suggested taking the health-care debate slowly, saying "it's too important an issue to jam through before the American people fully understand it."