Mayor Menino, The Dumbest Politician EVER?

In an industry that includes Ted Kennedy, Larry Craig and Maxine Waters, I hesitate to hand out the title "Dumbest Ever." But Boston Mayor Tom Menino is making a serious run at the #1 spot. He opposes allowing CVS stores to offer basic medical care at in-store clinics. Why?

[drum roll, please]

"Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong," Menino says.

Uh, mayor--what is it you think CVS (and Rite-Aid, Walgreens, etc) do for a living? EVERY private medical business "makes money off of sick people." Who the hell else is buying Tylenol and Nyquil--high-school stoners looking for a buzz?

What Mayor Menino--who sent 150 city hacks to New Hampshire to campaign for Mrs. Bill Clinton, by the way--has done is unintentionally reveal the Left's attitude toward both the free markets and the health care system.

Consider what Mayor Menino opposes: more access to health care at a price people are willing to pay. How is "more people seeing more nurses for professional medical care" a bad thing?

Menino's problem is that we're going to doctors who aren't government employees. Sick people are becoming healthy without taxpayer involvement. Even worse, CVS is going to make a profit and create jobs. Menino specifically complains that CVS will lure some of the best nurse practitioners away from city-run clinics and put them in the "dreaded private sector."

For big-government advocates like Menino, this is a disaster. He wants to make every health care professional a government employee, guaranteeing us lousy government health care provided by taxpayer-funded hacks. The private sector is now offering more healthy people, higher profits and more taxpaying, private sector workers.

No wonder Menino is so mad.