Pawlenty on GMA: Health bill more about politics than reform

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said the health insurance reform signed by President Obama Tuesdsay is more about politics than the nation's health care.

Pawlenty offered the Republican rebuttal to Obama advisor David Axelrod's comments Tuesday on ABC's Good Morning America program.

Pawlenty said the reforms are part of a long-standing liberal agenda pushed by President Obama and Democrats.

"We do need to fix our health care system, but they've taken it to this big federalized, bureaucratic, government-run kind of nanny nation approach, and there were better ways to do it," Pawlenty said. "They should have worked with us on those better ways."

Pawlenty also said the reform was based on outdated and foreign ideas.

"If President Obama and the Democrats would have set aside their obsession with things from the 1960s, or the European approach to these things ... It's not going to work," he said. "Every entitlement program they run is bankrupt. This one will be bankrupt within 20 years as well."

He said Republicans would gladly have agreed to parts of the reform, like extending family insurance coverage to young adults and forcing insurance to cover pre-existing conditions.

Pawlenty has asked DFL Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson to review the constitutionality of the reforms. Pawlenty said Minnesotans shouldn't be subject to a health insurance mandate.