More Talk
By Mitch Berg
DFL governor Tim Pawlenty took advantage of the post-election hangover to recite a list of DFL talking points:
“We all, I think, can chart a path toward universal coverage,” he said in a luncheon speech to a health reform conference in Minneapolis. “We’re going to have to move in stages. … We should start with covering all kids.”
Pawlenty also peppered his remarks with broad criticism of the nation’s current “tattered, outdated, inefficient” health care system and hard shots at health maintenance organizations (HMOs), prescription drug advertising and political meddling in health policy.
The DFL continues its drive to make heatlhcare unaffordable to anyone except via the good graces of government.
As Scott Johnson says:
So much is wrong with this propositon. I recoil from the arrogance of such instruction from public servants who have forgotten their jobs. Sorry, governor, but you aren’t the arbiter of the “wise decisions” of a free people.
UPDATE: My bad – Tim Pawlenty is, in fact, a Republican.
Wait until David Strom hears about this…
November 16th, 2006 at 6:17 am
Mitch,
I feel your pain. Thank you for your forthright post on the governor’s “shift” on healthcare policy. I am encouraged to see him being called to account on at least this front
However, I would respectfully submit that this is nothing new for him. There is much about his record over the last four years, and especially the last two, that show that he is far from the conservative that he has portrayed himself to be, and it is why the Republicans in the legislature and constitutional offices fared so badly. On health care, his push in the last legislative session for “evidence based” medicine will do incalculable damage to what is left of the physician-patient relationship and medical privacy.
Sadly, I predict that you will be having many more episodes of party label confusion in the coming weeks and months regarding health care; property rights (Clean Water Legacy Act); government picking business winners and losers (JOBZ); increased education funding that will further indoctrinate our children starting in the cradle with universal preschool, about the glories of the UN and environmentalism, to name a couple of things; infant mental health screening (which he has already endorsed); not to mention more light rail; a tax increase and possibly more publicly funded stadia.
The Republican party needs to quit stabbing its base in the back. I hope your post is the beginning of that necessary surgery to remove the knife.