I know a lot of people want to see Howard Dean as the next HHS secretary. I get where that comes from, but for those of us who live in Vermont, and lived here when Dean was governor, it's not so simple as all that.
Don't get me wrong: I like Dean. I think he was a decent governor and he's done great things for the Democratic party.
But I also remember his Presidential campaign when he talked about being able to provide health care for almost all of Vermont's kids and how he could do the same at the federal level, without ever acknowledging that a lot of the funding for Vermont's program came from the federal government.
And, really, that's not all.
Let me explain a little about Vermont's health care plan for low-income Vermonters: in 2000, Vermont Medicaid paid for a lot of services that it didn't pay for by 2002. Dental care, under Dean's administration, was thrown by the wayside. Chiropractic care was lost as well.
Vermont medicaid was a great program, but it got worse under Dean, not better.
Dean was a great organizer and an outstanding party builder. He is not a saint and he was not perfect by any means as a governor. He would not necessarily make a decent HHS secretary at all.