Bob Hugin, healthcare moderate?

I doubt it. The Republican candidate for Bob Menendez's New Jersey Senate seat, the past finance chair for Trump's New Jersey campaign, makes moderate noises about healthcare under cover of technocratic blather like paying for value and providing "health care, not sick care.". Someone needs to look beneath the hood and get him on the record as to what extent he'd support Republican healthcare priorities. In the North Jersey Record, I've posed some healthcare questions for him.

Hope you'll take a look: 3 healthcare questions for Bob Hugin

P.S. A more detailed look, with more background and a question about VA care, is here on the blog.

Four healthcare questions for Bob Hugin

Bob Hugin, the former Celgene CEO seeking to take Democrat Bob Menendez's New Jersey Senate seat, talks a moderate game on healthcare. He promises to protect access to insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, doesn't trash-talk the Affordable Care Act, and talks up value-based payment and focusing more on prevention than treatment -- pious goals to which politicians in both parties pay tribute.

Hugin is, however, a Republican - a prominent supporter of President Trump, big donor to Paul Ryan's SuperPACs, and aspiring member of Senate Team McConnell. Many of his rather vague pronouncements about existing programs demand greater scrutiny.

Hugin focused on healthcare in a September 26 roundtable in Glen Ridge, covered by Advance Media here. Here are some followup questions reporters -- and voters - -should ask Hugin when he delivers moderate-sounding pronouncements about existing programs. Quotations are from the AM story or the short video embedded in it.

1. "I cannot envision any changes to our health system today that would not protect people with pre-existing conditions."