Neumann campaigns against contraceptive coverage requirements

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Neumann says his top priority, if elected, is the repeal of the federal Affordable Care Act. He made a whistle-stop tour of three Catholic hospitals Wednesday, calling abortion language in the law an attack on religious freedom.

Neumann’s three-city campaign swing began at St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, where he said the new law requiring all hospitals to provide what opponents say are abortion-inducing drugs in their employee insurance plans violated the constitutional separation of church and state. He says if elected he’ll work to dismantle the bureaucracy the act has already created, even if the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the law in the next few days. Neumann offered his own plan for dealing with health care insurance: “Employers and employees should get together, decide what they want in their insurance plan, and then the insurance companies should provide that at a market price to the company. If the government would get out of the business of dictating and mandating what’s included, we would see much more interaction between employees and employees and insurance companies to provide cost effective insurance plans that meet the needs of the people.”

Neumann also made stops at Catholic hospitals in Milwaukee and Green Bay. In Madison a public relations spokesman for St. Mary’s said the hospital, as a non-profit institution, is not endorsing any candidate. Neumann ranks a distant second behind former Gov. Tommy Thompson in the Marquette Law school’s June poll of likely voters released this week. But with eight weeks to go before the August primary, the poll found 25 percent of the voters are still undecided. The winner will face Democrat Tammy Baldwin in November.