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Freed Blasts Kane Over Obamacare

Dave Freed (left) and Kathleen Kane

How much say does Pennsylvania’s Attorney General have over the health care law known as Obamacare? Not much. But he or she will be able to determine the state’s participation in a lawsuit against it. Republican Dave Freed has called out Democratic opponent Kathleen Kane for saying she would withdraw from the suit.

“It’s clear that Kathleen Kane is well outside the mainstream on a number of significant issues that affect Pennsylvania families. But it’s nevertheless striking to hear that she is a staunch supporter of Obamacare – a bill that the clear majority of Pennsylvania voters want overturned,” his campaign said Monday.

The Freed campaign email pointed to an April interview with the Legal Intelligencer, in which Freed and Kane took contrasting sides on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the multiple lawsuits challenging the legislation.

During the interview, Kane said she would withdraw Pennsylvania from the lawsuit against the law.

“I would withdraw Pennsylvania from the lawsuit. I pledge to you now, if I am elected and this lawsuit is still ongoing, by the close of business on my first day in office I will withdraw Pennsylvania from this lawsuit,” she said.

“Health care in this country is broken. Our Constitution affords a criminal the right to an attorney but doesn’t afford a sick child a doctor. That is unconscionable.”

The interview was published on April 17, as Kane faced a heated Democratic primary opponent in former Congressman Patrick Murphy.

Freed took the opposite stance.

“I will continue Pennsylvania’s participation in the lawsuit. Obamacare is an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government and as attorney general, the citizens of Pennsylvania can be assured that I will protect them from such overreaching actions.”

Indeed, his criticism of Obamacare and support for the lawsuit – joined initially by then-AG Tom Corbett during the 2010 campaign – is often one of Freed’s strongest applause lines during appearances in front of GOP groups.

The Freed campaign said Kane’s stance goes against the will of voters, according to a recent Quinnipac poll of swing-state voters in Pennsylvania, in which 46 percent of voters said they thought Congress should try to repeal the health-care law.

“I agree with the solid majority of Pennsylvania voters and wholeheartedly support overturning government-run health care in Pennsylvania,” said Freed.

Without embracing the law itself, Kane Communications Director Josh Morrow called Freed out, saying the lawsuit is a waste of resources.

“At a time when Freed’s political patron, Governor Corbett, is slashing funding for our schools, it’s bizarre that Dave Freed would favor spending the money of Pennsylvania taxpayers on a lawsuit that is going to be litigated ITAL regardless of what Pennsylvania does ITAL instead of focusing the resources of the Attorney-General’s office on cases like protecting seniors from abuse and cracking down on political corruption,” Morrow said.

He also dinged Freed over an apparent typo in the press release, where Freed called on “the state Supreme Court” to overturn the health care law.

“Freed’s lack of knowledge highlights that he’s playing politics instead of making a serious legal argument,” he said.

Freed is currently the District Attorney of Cumberland County, a post he has held since 2005. Kathleen Kane served as an assistant District Attorney in Lackawanna County from 1995 to 2007.

17 Responses

  1. Aren’t you glad that this part of the great Obamacare MANDATE was struck down! What a great read the health care law is. Let’s follow suit with the rest of the world and bankrupt us in record time with FREE (ha ha) Health Care. Didn’t you learn this lesson from your parents as a child? Nothing in life is FREE!
    AP reports that “4 million Americans — the vast majority of them middle class — will have to pay the new penalty for not getting health insurance when President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law kicks in, according to congressional estimates released Thursday. The penalties will average a little more than $1,000 apiece in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report.”

    Penalties will be phased in from 2014. By 2016, the fine will be $695 or 2.5% of household income, whichever is greater. More than a dozen states are challenging the individual mandate in federal court as unconstitutional.

  2. Lycogirl, are you an expert on each and every woman in the United States IQs and voting record?
    Welcome to the new Democrat tax and it is a whopper……Obamacare!

  3. “Analysis”
    Anyways, you can go on and on how corrupt Freed is. That does not make sense in this discussion. All political figures are corrupt, or do you live in a bubble where only the republicans are corrupt? You must be lonely.

  4. How does your football anylasis have anything to do with the socialism of Obamacare? I do NOT need anything from the federal gov.. The feds are not there to GIVE and GIVE you everything!!! Gezzz does anyone take care of themselves in life anymore???? Get off your foodstamps and go put on your big boy pants and WORK for what you want!!! I am not saying that health care does not need reformed, I just do not want the Feds to have anything to do with it!

  5. The key role of Attorney General is enforcement of the law without fear or favor, hardly likely given Dave Freed’s connection to Tom Corbett who slow rolled the Sandusky investigation and Dave Freed’s connection to LeRoy Zimmerman, who siphoned money from disadvantaged kids at Hershey Trust and Dave Freed’s connection to Senate Bonusgate beneficiaries.

    Oddly, Tom Corbett is pressing ahead with Pennsylvania Exchange at the same time AG opposes Obamacare.

    I would like to see Kane campaign hammer One Party Rule and the arrogance of the Republicans and raise the real possibility that Sandusky investigation was slow rolled to protect Penn State football.

  6. Bravo Kane! The suit against the Affordable Health Care Act was itself just a political act. I was ashamed that our commonwealth was a party to that action in the first place.

  7. By the end of June, Obamacare will be moot. Problem with “greedy” insurance companies: they know how many average “policy holders” would cheat their insurance company if they felt they’d get away with it. Obamacare is 2,000 pages in which to hide fraud. AG should push the Insurance Commissioner to get more education in the nuts and bolts of Providers vs. Consumers.

  8. Does Ms. Klatt understand how weary women with an IQ above 50 resent their passe feminism?

  9. Since the health care case in which PA joined has already been argued to the Supreme Court, Kane’s pledge to withdraw from it is meaningless. There is little or nothing that remains to do in that case.

  10. Freed’s behind in the money race. This is a pander to Highmark in an effort to get big $$$ contributions.

  11. So is Freed saying that he intends to govern according to the whims of political polls?

  12. “… [A] bill that the clear majority of Pennsylvania voters want overturned.”

    Coupla’ observations.

    1 – Anybody not in favor of giving support to candidates for public office who have a command of — at least — elementary school mathematics? 46% is not “a clear majority” of anything.
    2 – Is that a lot of people? Yup. Except that it doesn’t account for some of us who don’t like the form “Obamacare” took as a sell-out to the insurance industry. We got sausage instead of sirloin, because of Republican “support” for a plan that’s a whole lot easier to criticize to electoral advantage. Some of us are disappointed that Barry wasn’t a little smarter than that.
    3 – The Dave Freed “if-it’s-a-lot-of-people-it-must-be-right” school of moral philosophy and law: Fifty years ago, a “majority” of Americans either were against (42%) or had no opinion about (9%) the Civil Rights act of 1964. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/3427/most-important-events-century-from-viewpoint-people.aspx)

    There are many reasons to reject Mr. Freed’s world view. Given almost any of them, however, should he really be the chief law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth?

  13. Hail to Obamacare, Kane and straight Democratic Party! Poor Freed, every woman I’ve spoken to hates the republicans.

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