Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Politics / Woods Bredesen Declares Scott Brown's Victory 'a Good Thing'
Posted by Jeff Woods on Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:34 PM
"I think the burdens on the states were substantial. If they come back at this again, I hope that they can find a way to do it that does not involve just passing significant portions of the bill onto the states. We clearly need to do some things in the way of health reform. There's lots of different opinions as to what those ought to be, and mine are probably different than someone else's about what that is. "I really do believe, however, as someone who is in the world in terms of being a practicing politician, I really do believe you've got to respond to what's on the public's mind at a certain level. I think it had gotten a little off track with the public being very very concerned about the economy and jobs and the prospect of losing jobs, and the Congress off designing health reform to take place in the latter part of the next decade. To the extent that what happened in Massachusetts kind of brings everybody back, puts their feet on the ground with what people are really concerned about right now, it will have been a good thing."
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Sorry, Andy, but Bredesen is right. People are worried about having a job, paying their bills and keeping their homes. They are also worried about going into debt for health care, but that is just a part -- not even the biggest part -- of their economic worries.
And Bredesen has been consistent on this subject. Just passing the costs off to the states is not a good idea. The Governor has consistently said that he supports comprehensive health care on a nationwide basis, but it has to be paid for in some other way than just expanding Medicaid and asking the states to pay for it. Our state is going through a budget crisis already. Do you, Andy, have an idea how we would handle another billion dollars of health care costs? How would you deal with that? Bredesen has managed the budget OK, and "wingnut" is the last thing I would call him.
Ahem. "Sounds like" was what I said. I didn't say "is."
Reading is fundamental.
Still, it would be nice if Bredesen would say something that wasn't pulled straight from the Republican blast fax every once in a while. Maybe if he could figure out how to do that, he'd be Secretary of HHS instead of merely a lame duck.
I think it will be a good thing too. If the Democrats are forced to go the 51 vote route, they can produce a good healthcare bill, instead of the 60 vote disaster created by the Blue Dogs and Lieberman. With only 51 votes, they don't need the few Blue Dog senators or Lieberman.
If I may make a point on this - Gov. Bredesen has been pretty-well heading up the Democratic Governors Association's efforts on healthcare reform, and has been working closely with Nancy Ann Min DeParle at HHS as well as Nathan Daschle at DGA.
Bredesen should notice that he's lost 2 Democratic governorships in VA and NJ over the past few months. For all this talk about burdens on the states, the real issue is that we have 47 million uninsured folks in this country and we have an unsustainable cost burden on consumers. Everyone - and I mean EVERYONE - acknowledges that the wealthy should take on more of the responsibility. It's too bad Tennessee's tax structure isn't set up for that. Maybe Bredesen can talk with Phil Valentine and Dave Ramsey and take up a collection for TennCare funding - they could a TennCare miracle network telethon and invite Michael W. Smith and Vince Gill to sing.
