From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3598-2004Oct27.html?referrer=email
Bush's push in Minnesota hit an unlikely roadblock yesterday. Former senator David F. Durenberger (R), a well-respected voice on health care, penned an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune eviscerating Bush's record on the issue and describing Kerry's plan as moving "in a long-overdue direction."
Durenberger, chairman of the National Institute of Health Policy at the University of St. Thomas, laid out his case for why health care is moving in the wrong direction. He cited statistics on rising costs and the growing number of uninsured people. "As a Republican, with some experience, I sincerely regret having to say the record over the last four years and the prescription for reform the president is proposing give me little confidence that this most challenging of all domestic priorities will be adequately addressed over the next four years," he wrote.
In particular, Durenberger criticized the Medicare prescription drug law that Bush pushed as a windfall for insurers at the expense of the elderly and taxpayers. He said Bush's "underfunded" tax credits for buying insurance would "undermine and weaken employer-based coverage and make it even more difficult to find insurance coverage for the least healthy among us."
Bush's contention that Kerry's proposal would lead to "big government"-style health care is "not true," Durenberger wrote. Kerry's proposal of expanding government and private programs is more in line with what moderate Democrats and "mainstream Republican senators," including Durenberger, tried to enact in 1994, he said.
"It is the national security position on which President Bush and Sen. Kerry differ most and the one on which Kerry has the clearer vision for restoring security to all Americans."