Barringer is an attorney, health care consultant and tree farmer with decades of health care experience. The Lee County native is making his first run for public office.
Candidate Q&A
What do you see as the biggest financial and administrative challenge to implementing the work requirements for Medicaid that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill?
I think we need to distinguish between requirements that actually promote work and requirements that simply create paperwork barriers to Medicaid coverage. The law requires states to verify work or qualifying activities, and to repeatedly document compliance. That creates a substantial administrative burden for states and beneficiaries. More importantly, evidence shows that many Medicaid adults who will be subject to these requirements are already working, while others face caregiving, health, or educational responsibilities.
If a requirement does not meaningfully increase employment but instead causes eligible people to lose coverage because they cannot navigate the paperwork, I would support scrapping it. We should promote work through education, training, child care, transportation, and access to health care, not use administrative hurdles simply to reduce the Medicaid rolls (especially when this has been done to fund tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans).
What would be your plan for ensuring the future security/strength of Social Security and Medicare?
Social Security and Medicare are promises we must keep, but keeping them strong requires confronting their long-term finances honestly. I would protect current and near-retirees from abrupt benefit reductions while pursuing bipartisan reforms that put both programs on a sustainable path. That means looking carefully at the payroll tax base, income thresholds, eligibility and benefit formulas for future generations, and ways to reduce improper payments and administrative waste.
For Medicare, we should continue pursuing better value through preventive care, coordinated care, stronger competition, and payment models that reward outcomes rather than volume. The objective should be to preserve these programs for the people who depend on them while making responsible adjustments early enough that future generations are not forced to deal with a crisis.
What would you support in Congress as a plan to help control health care/pharmaceutical costs?
We need to address health care costs throughout the system rather than focus on any single participant. I support greater price transparency, stronger competition, site-neutral payments where appropriate, continued Medicare negotiation of prescription drug prices, and greater scrutiny of pharmacy benefit managers and other intermediaries. We should also reduce the administrative complexity that adds cost without improving care.
Over the longer term, I think we will be best positioned if we can move toward having a basic health coverage floor available to every American, while preserving a robust private market where people can buy additional coverage and services if they want them. That model could give people greater security and choice while creating a more predictable foundation for controlling costs. I believe that we ideally should establish an affordable baseline and let competition, innovation, and consumer choice operate above it.
What steps would you take to improve access to health care in rural areas? How do we make the Rural Health Transformation Program successful in North Carolina?
Rural health requires more than keeping hospital doors open. We need to strengthen the entire local delivery system: primary care, rural hospitals, behavioral health, EMS, specialists, telehealth, pharmacies, and the workforce needed to provide that care.
North Carolina should use the Rural Health Transformation Program to make durable investments in workforce recruitment and retention, rural health IT, behavioral health, mobile and community-based care, and partnerships among hospitals, community health centers, and others. The program should be measured by results: more providers in rural communities, shorter travel times, better chronic disease outcomes, fewer avoidable emergency visits, and stronger financial sustainability for rural providers. We should also make sure successful pilots can continue after federal grant funding ends. Federal dollars should catalyze lasting improvements, not create programs that disappear when the grant cycle ends.
The rollout of AI is moving fast, including in health care, and leaders in that space are calling for things to slow down. What federal moves should be taken to regulate it, if at all?
AI is moving too quickly for government to simply wait and see. Regulation should be targeted and risk-based rather than trying to regulate the technology itself out of existence. In health care, patients should know when AI is materially involved in decisions affecting their care, and systems should be tested for accuracy, bias, privacy, cybersecurity, and safety before being deployed at scale.
Where do you stand on federal vaccine policy? What should be done to prevent future disease outbreaks?
Vaccines are one of the most effective public health tools we have, and federal policy should be guided by sound science, transparent evidence, and individual circumstances. I support making recommended vaccines readily available and affordable, particularly for children and vulnerable populations, while maintaining appropriate medical exemptions and respecting legitimate individual concerns.
We’ve had some high-profile food contamination outbreaks, yet the federal government is pulling back on regulation of food, air and water. What level of federal regulation do you support and why?
I support strong, science-based federal standards where individual consumers and businesses cannot reasonably protect themselves on their own. Food safety, clean air, and clean water are classic examples. A contaminated food product or polluted water supply can affect thousands of people before anyone has the ability to respond individually. The federal government has an important role in establishing clear standards, inspecting facilities, monitoring risks, and enforcing rules consistently across states.
PFAS contamination is a nationwide issue; how do you address it while balancing public safety and business interests?
PFAS presents a legitimate public health and environmental challenge because these chemicals are persistent and widespread. I support strong standards for drinking water and meaningful monitoring where contamination is a concern. We should also accelerate research into health effects, remediation technologies, and safer alternatives.
Where companies knowingly contaminated communities or violated existing requirements, they should be held accountable. At the same time, we should avoid treating every manufacturer or community as equally responsible for contamination that may have occurred decades ago under different standards. Small businesses, municipalities, farmers, and water systems should not be left with impossible cleanup costs for contamination they did not cause. The federal government should provide technical assistance, establish clear liability rules, and target enforcement toward responsible parties while protecting public health.
The building and placement of data centers have become a big issue, particularly in many rural communities. What should be the federal government’s role, if any, in how these are developed?
The federal government’s role should be to establish consistent standards for issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries, including national security, environmental impacts, energy reliability, and interstate infrastructure. Data centers should pay their fair share of the infrastructure and energy costs they create rather than shifting those costs to ordinary households. We also need to ensure that large new loads do not undermine grid reliability or drive up electricity prices for existing customers.
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?
I’m running because I believe government should work better for the people it serves. Given my background as an attorney, a health care consultant with more than two decades of experience working with Medicaid and other health care systems, and a tree farmer who lives and works in a rural community, I have perspectives on both the promise of government and the consequences when government systems do not work well.
I believe in fiscal responsibility, private enterprise, affordable and accessible health care, strong national security, environmental stewardship, and individual freedom. Most of all, I believe Congress needs to return to governing: listening to constituents, working across party lines when possible, and being accountable for whether the policies we enact actually make people’s lives better.
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