Michael Leavitt
Another Signpost on the Road to the Right
The latest sign of rightward drift in American politics, or at least the Republican Party, came this week when Politico reported that Mitt Romney had asked Michael Leavitt to begin preparing for the transition, in case Romney wins. Leavitt is a former Republican governor of Utah and former Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. In normal times, those credentials would be more than enough to satisfy most conservatives.
Leavitt To Europe
The New York Times reports this morning that HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt will soon be traveling to Switzerland and the Netherlands to see first-hand how those countries' health-care systems--which achieve universal coverage through, more or less, a mandate-and-subsidize approach similar to the one proposed in the Senate by Ron Wyden and Bob Bennett--actually function in practice.
