Senator Bond opposes President Obama’s health care legislation, insisting that targeted changes in law would solve most of the nation’s health care problems.

Bond says the president’s massive proposal is an overreach and what would he propose?

"First of all, make it simple enough so that the people of America can understand it and everybody can read it," Bond says.

Bond claims one critic said he would need two weeks and two lawyers to get through the bill.

"Well, we shouldn’t be taking over a 6th of our nation’s health care with that kind of cockamamie, complicated scheme," according to Bond.

Bond is a Republican. Obama is a Democrat. Democrats control Congress, but disagreements within the party have held up consideration of the president’s health care plan, a plan estimated to cost $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

Bond has a counter-proposal in mind. He says that the government needs to expand the safety net provided by community health centers. He advocates allowing small business owners to pool their resources to provide health care for their employees, a move that Bond estimates would provide health care coverage to an additional 26 million workers. He says another 11 million impoverished Americans without health care coverage are eligible for existing governmental programs and should be enrolled.

A change in the country’s tax law would help, according to Bond. He says inequities are embedded in the tax code that drive up the cost of buying individual health insurance policies. The senator also calls for malpractice reform, claiming that "junk lawsuits" cost the country as much as $120 billion each year.

"I mean, those are some simple things that can make a huge difference and do so within the current system itself," Bond says, "and without having a brand new bureaucracy to run health care."

Bond expects members of Congress to hear plenty of complaints about the health care proposal during their August break.

Download/listen Brent Martin reports (:60 MP3)