Just about every Republican in the country has been critical of the health reform law since President Obama signed it last
week. But Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is fast on his way to becoming critic-in-chief.
Daniels blasted the new health law last week in a speech in Indianapolis and in a column in The Wall Street Journal.
“Our federal overlords have ruled,” Daniels wrote in the Journal on March 26. “We better start
adjusting to our new status as good Europeans.”
Three days earlier, Daniels told the Economic Club of Indiana that the federal health law would not reduce the federal deficit—as
predicted by the Congressional Budget Office—but expand it, while at the same time adding huge new burdens to state
governments.
"This is going to be an immorally—and I choose that word carefully—immorally huge burden we're about
to place on our children,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker told the Associated Press that, because Daniels oversaw the beginning of the
nation’s huge budget deficits during his two years as budget director for President George W. Bush, he should watch
his words about huge spending.
"Given his atrocious record as OMB director under George W. Bush, which set this nation on a course for the deficit
that we've had over the last 10 years, he's the last person who should be talking about debt," Parker said.
Daniels, however, pressed on. He encouraged Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller to join a lawsuit challenging part of the
new law as unconstitutional. Zoeller, also a Republican, did join that 14-state lawsuit on Monday.
Daniels also offered a few alternative ideas to the new law. In the Journal, he wrote, “Congress could have
done what Republicans should suggest now: Shift to a system that allows individuals—not businesses—to buy health
insurance tax free. They could also create tax credits for buying health insurance based on income and health status to guarantee
everyone coverage and encourage medical care and insurance competition.”
He also repeated standard Republican proposals: allow consumers to buy health insurance across state lines and place limits
on medical malpractice lawsuits.

















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For a former insurance company exec to criticize health care reform is hardly a surprise.
If his predictions about the "harm" this legislation will do is as accurate as his fiscal predictions of the invasion of Iraq were, we'll all be just fine.