You hear all this talk about whether or not people approve of the Affordable Care Act, and you start to believe that somehow the exact center of the country lies somewhere between those who feel the Act was the end of freedom as we know it and those who feel it was the answer to all our prayers. Then a reader sends you this:
The gloves are off in the fight for the Democratic nomination for governor. Former State Senator Matt Dunne is calling out Senator Peter Shumlin for what he says is a troubling misstatement.
Peter Shumlin first said it two weeks ago in an online questionnaire, then again this week in a mailing to voters: “I am the only candidate who sponsored a single-payer health care bill.” Dunne says that is simply not true.
“The facts are that I also sponsored a single-payer health care bill,” Dunne told reporters outside the Statehouse Wednesday.
He did. During the 1993-1994 legislative session when Dunne was serving as a State Representative he co-sponsored a bill that would have created a single-payer system. He wants a public retraction of Shumlin’s claim and is requesting that Shumlin send out another mailer with the correction.
Wait… what? Are you kidding me?
One Democratic candidate for governor, Matt Dunne, is upset at another Democratic candidate, Peter Shumlin, because he Shumlin claimed that Dunne did NOT support single-payer health care. Did you get that? They are fighting to show which of them is the more fervent supporter of single-payer health care reform.
Watch the TV, and you’d think that voicing anything less than total hatred for such reform would be the kiss of death in modern politics. Not so in Vermont.
Vermont is still a state, right?
