Pawlenty operates on Romney with WaPo op-ed

With his op-ed in the Washington Post this week, Gov. Pawlenty’s purpose was widely seen as delving more than skin deep. Sure, he was attacking national health insurance legislation, but he was also surgically enhancing the size of his health care portfolio in preparation for presidential primping in 2012. And with a simultaneous flick of the scalpel, he tried removing Mitt Romney’s ace in the hole: a well-liked state health plan that could be a national model. 

Pawlenty made mention of Massachusetts’ plan that Romney signed into law as governor in his letter to Minnesota’s congressional delegation, and he again took the surgical gloves off in his WaPo piece:

Massachusetts’s experience should caution Congress against focusing primarily on access. While the Massachusetts plan has reduced the number of uninsured people, costs have been dramatically higher than expected. The result? Increased taxes and fees. The Boston Globe has reported on a current short-term funding gap and the need to obtain a new federal bailout.

To which the Boston Globe responded today in an editorial titled “Mass. bashers take note: Health reform is working“:

In Massachusetts, cost estimates for the reform plan before its passage in 2006 were so low that Romney and the reform law’s Democratic supporters in the Legislature were able to get away without creating a new tax to fund it. After the costly Wall Street bailout and the $787 billion stimulus package, that option is not open to President Obama and Congress. But Congress should not allow itself to be buffaloed by false claims about Massachusetts into fearing a tsunami of red ink.

Whatever the meaning for medicine and social policy, the political diagnosis is certain enough. WaPo’s Chris Cillizza at The Fix:

Pawlenty’s Post op-ed should put to rest any doubt about whether he will run for president; outgoing Midwestern governors don’t tend to place op-eds in national newspapers as a matter of habit.