Now, a couple of things here. One is, as Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander hinted at last weekend, Republicans have said and will probably run in November on the charge that they will repeal the legislation, should it be enacted.
Also, State Senator Carey Baker has introduced language proposing a constitutional amendment that would forbid any federal law from requiring any "person, employer or health-care provider to participate in any health care system (Baker calls it the Florida Health Care Freedom Act).
As USA Today reported recently, Florida is hardly an outlier in trying to op-out of the national health care debate. The paper reports that legislators in more than two-thirds of the states are moving to undermine the bill before it even passes Congress.
But of course, "General" McCollum is running to be your next chief executive of the great state of Florida, so why not show that you're with the majority of Floridians (according to some polls) who generally are not in love with the health care bills as currently constituted into becoming federal law?
The only downside for the AG is it shows excessive politicking, but when you've been in Congress for twenty years, and are now running for statewide office for the fourth time in a decade, it's what you do.
For all of the talk about how the citizenry is up in arms about "politics as usual" it remains in doubt whether that will sentiment will truly be reflected in the fall elections. Of course, who's the better candidate should play a decisive role, and in the governor's race, that's far too early to project.
We do now that McCollum continues to enjoy a solid double digit lead over Democrat Alex Sink so far (for her part, according to the Orlando Sentinel, Sink did say earlier this week that she supports 'some form of health care reform", which Democrats who feel the same way should be heartened by).
If you'll recall last year, the CFO refused to comment one way or another on what she thought of a public option in any health care reform legislation, an indecisive gesture that McCollum enjoyed mocking (and continues to do so, as this press release issued yesterday indicates).
Whether Bill McCollum is right on the issue of threatening to sue regarding the individual mandate provision of a potential health care bill is subjective. But though Alex Sink can rightly say that she is not a professional politician, there is something to be said for experience when it comes to playing the game, which in this case means becoming the chief executive of the nation's fourth largest state.