The New York Times turns to physician members of Congress for views on the health care debate. They include U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder of Little Rock.

Another Democrat, Representative Vic Snyder of Arkansas, had dealt with patients who could not afford medicine at his family practice before he was first elected to Congress in 1996.

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“I’ve certainly had experiences of writing out a prescription for someone and either having the pharmacist call me up or having the patient tell me they saw what the bill for the medicine was going to be and just handed it back,” he said.

But Dr. Snyder remains hesitant about a public plan and is emphatic that it must preserve patient choice and pay for itself. He said he had positive experiences with Medicaid, however, calling it his practice’s “most efficient payer.”

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“It’s not a deal breaker for me either way,” he said of the public plan. “I don’t know why it’s resonating so much with Democrats.”

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