Reply #28: The average is 10.18 without 1991 [View All]

[dpbrown]

If 1991 can be chalked up to Snelling, then the average for the Dean years is slightly less than the 10.22 overall average, but still contains all the highest peaks, including the 13% year.

So not only does skewing the numbers to appease the disciples not give Dean a resounding lead over Snelling (R) for the time period listed above, it still doesn't support an argument that Dean made health care coverage substantially better for Vermonters.

In Dean's best year, he still only achieved 91.4% coverage. (Remember, your argument is that the figures are unreliable.)

His "plan" is to throw more money at the broken system of separate private insurers to get closer to what he got in Vermont (which regardless of whether the numbers are reliable or not was not 100%) instead of standing up with 8000 doctors in calling for federal single-payer and one insured pool of all Americans, guaranteeing 100% coverage at the same cost we're paying now or less.

Dean's plan is broken before even being tried, and that's why his disciples are so bent on hawking the failed but it'll paaaaaaass mantra they've learned so well.

So go ahead and take the 10.18 average and console yourself with it, whimper about Dean-bashers, and be happy that you weren't one of the nearly 1 out of 10 people who couldn't get health insurance in Howard Dean's Vermont.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minnesota