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I saw most of MTP but missed a short segment...I actually missed the part where he said the line you quoted. But since his appearance, I’ve studied several sources and tried to piece things together. I believe he had to have been referring to the two huge changes Ryan proposed re: healthcare. We already know what they are. Changing the current Medicare system to a voucher system with premium support for the lower income folks, where they go into the private market to buy their choice of plans but the gubmint supplements the cost based on income level. Second, block-granting Medicaid to the states for the governors to run the programs as they see fit.

He seems to be trying to say that he thinks those are too huge of a change for the gubmint to mandate on people...just because of the magnitude of the change not necessarily because they are bad ideas. The part of MTP I did hear was in which he said he believed in a range of choices for people. So from that, I’m guessing he might be for letting everybody choose what kind of plan they want from a wide range of options. However, if he believes in a mandate aka coercion, penalties etc nationwide on every American (those details are not yet fleshed out), then put those two together and you have a “you must, must have a plan, and here are your multiple choices, now pick one”. I guess that in his mind wouldn’t be social engineering from the left or the right.

Maybe social engineering from the center?? Which would be ok?

Again, my guess is maybe he got scared by the polls and town halls where so many say they don’t want Medicare changed, and maybe he got scared that the Dems will succeed in their lies that the GOP is out to destroy Medicare. Maybe he believes the only way out of that trap - if it is a trap - is to offer everybody a choice which would include things as they are as well as various kinds of changes they could choose.

He shouldn’t have used those loaded words in describing what the current GOP have put forward. No way should they be verbally equated with the radical left led by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Soros, etc. If he didn’t mean it that way, well, what can I say?...it SOUNDED that way...

I din’t watgch MTP either. However, from the articles I’ve read, it appears that Newt viewed Rhyan’s idea of providing insurance vouchers to Meidcare beneficiaries and encouraging health savings accounts as “right wing social engineering.” That’s reallly rancid because it’s only such an approach that has any hope of digging us out of the hole we’re in and avoiding collapse of the entire system. It’s also the kind of free enterprise, individual responsibility based sysgem the pre-1995 (the year the Clintons blackmailed and flipped him) Newt would have advocated.