Tim Pawlenty A Serious Conservative Voice on Health Care

Politico reports the Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty is making an impact on the health care debate as a insightful voice for conservatives in their article Tim Pawlenty: Voters 'ticked off and scared'

In an interview with POLITICO, Pawlenty offered tough criticism of President Barack Obama’s attempted health care overhaul and spoke in detail about potential GOP alternatives but stopped short of using the kind of overheated rhetoric that has marked the August debate .

“People are ticked off and scared. You have a situation where a good chunk of the country is waking up to the fact that Obama is proposing things that are out of step with common sense, out of step with the notion that the government isn’t going to run everything,” said Pawlenty, who delivered a health care-oriented speech Friday at the second-annual GOPAC conference in Chicago, a meeting of conservative state legislators and national party leaders.

Pawlenty said he has three major objections to Democratic plans: the public option, possible tax increases on small and medium-sized businesses and the “massive spending disaster” that would result if health care were added to a federal budget.

The Minnesota governor also supports the right to pool insurance risk across state lines, opening up private insurance markets to allow consumers to buy a policy from nearly anywhere, creating an electronic billing and prescription system, the prohibition of coverage denials based on pre-existing conditions, portability guarantees and incentivizing hospitals and patients to reduce the cost of individual visits.

His approach doesn’t always land him in the headlines, but it’s winning him notice as a serious voice in the debate without damaging his Minnesota Nice brand.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26271.html#ixzz0OjXOjuao