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Rubio: Crist “reinventing” on health care. Crist: Am not. Rubio: Are so.

Posted Mar 16, 2010 by William March

Updated Mar 16, 2010 at 05:04 PM

Today’s fracas in the GOP Senate primary: Charlie Crist bashes the health care reform proposal, leading Marco Rubio to claim Crist is contradicting previous statements that he wouldn’t scrap the proposal.

In Washington for meetings about the federal NASA budget, Crist met with reporters and, according to his campaign, said the health care proposal would be “devastating” for Florida, and he’s “concerned about them trying to ram this through”; that he’ll work to repeal it if it passes; and that he doesn’t see any significant difference between himself and Rubio on the issue.

That drew a quick response from the Rubio campaign, which cited a recent newspaper interview in which Crist was asked whether he’d scrap the entire plan, and he said he might not.

“Just as Charlie Crist infamously claimed he didn’t endorse the stimulus, he’s now trying to reinvent his position on ObamaCare,” said spokesman Alex Burgos.  “A few weeks and a couple of polls later, he’s now desperately railing against it. Throughout his career, Charlie Crist has abandoned the Republican Party on key issues.”

Is this a “reinvention” by Crist? Here’s what he actually told the Palm Beach Post ed board:

“There may be parts of it that you don’t have to scrap. There are three parts of it that I would like to see scrapped. It would raise taxes significantly, it would raise rates significantly, and it would take half a trillion out of Medicare. The real issue here as it related to health care is that people want it to not cost so much and people want to have access to it. ... It’s not easy to get it and it’s too expensive when you do get it.”

Crist said he’s concerned because about 4 million Floridians have no health insurance.

Asked what he does like in the health care proposals from the Democrats and President Barack Obama, Crist said, “I don’t think a whole lot.”

A Crist campaign spokeswoman replied to Rubio’s charges, “The Rubio campaign is simply trying to parse words to draw a distinction where there is none.”