I missed the apparent lovefest over healthcare between Newt and Hillary last Thursday at the National Press Club. It was covered in Friday’s WaPo article The Reformer and the Gadfly Agree on Health Care, also covered in philly.com’s piece entitled Former political foes patch up differences to tout health care.
Some of the more eyebrow-raising comments:
“Gingrich, out of elected office, was free to depart from his anti-government roots. With Clinton nodding in support, he came out in favor of mandatory daily physical education, healthful food in schools and a “transfer of finances” from rich to poor. Some of this,” Gingrich said after a long list of concessions to the left, “may surprise you.”
Mandatory exercise and diets? Mandatory??
Clinton had surprises, too. She nodded in support of Gingrich’s proposal to “voucherize Medicaid” and agreed with his statement that “welfare reform has really worked.” She granted that “there is enough money in the system right now to cover the uninsured” and she said that piecemeal reform was the best route.”
In other words, Clinton believes that egalitarian redistribution works and is cost-free.
This little sentence on the philly site is hilarious:
Clinton and Gingrich both said there were ways to fix the system that would not raise ideological red flags, or trigger bitter partisan fights.
Of course they do. It looks like both Dems and the GOP have agreed that piecemeal expansion of government power in health care can be a nonpartisan affair.
P.S. Has Gingrich gone completely mad?