A month ago, on KNUS Backbone radio, State Sen. Greg Brophy said that when it comes to health care legislation, it’s “almost committing political suicide to vote against any of these touchy-feely mandates.”

He was referring to a bill that directed Colorado insurance companies to provide coverage for maternity care, for having babies. That’s about as touchy feely as it gets, in a good and bad way.

Brophy, a Republican from Wray, went on to call it “gutter politics” when Democrats bring up mean GOP votes against maternity care during the election cycle.

Does Brophy think his steely votes, against the  touchiest and feeliest stuff, should be off the table come election time?

We don’t know what Brophy thinks, because host Ross Kaminsky didn’t get into it, though Kaminsky’s show isn’t one of those I-love-the-tea-party-and-the-tea-party-loves-me affairs, like you find on other radio stations. Unlike the core Tea Party nuts (not my term), Kaminsky isn’t a social conservative.

But we know from the radio show, that Brophy thinks health-care politics is “really ugly,” not because of the financial influence of insurance companies, for example, but because of the compassion people feel toward people with infant babies or breast cancer.

If only that really were the ugly part of the health care debate, right?

But not all of Brophy’s allies in his battle against touchy-feely health-care mandates are as plain spoken as Brophy.

A new effort to repeal Colorado’s law requiring insurance companies to offer maternity care was launched recently. It’s going by the decidedly un-touchy-feely name of, “Repeal 10-1021.”

And if that isn’t un-touchy-feely enough for you, its tag line is, “The health care bill that will make you sick.” (Don’t tell that to pregnant women, especially poor ones.)

Nothing about political suicide or touchy-feeliness anywhere on the new site, though a tweet says State Sen. Mark Scheffel is “on board.” Lots of talk about “choice” and “cost.”

I guess the politics of health care are so ugly that you have to listen to conservative talk radio to get the full story.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 10:14 am and is filed under Colorado State Legislature, Talk Radio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.