Pawlenty and the Health Care Honey Pot.

No one has covered Gov. Pawlenty's budget maneuvers and manipulations of the Health Care Access Fund better than Britt Robson. For an early example, see part III of this story, updated here, and most recently here.

Of course the reason both the governor and the Legislature proposed ambitious task forces in the first place — and the reason both task forces swallowed hard and came up with huge, radical reforms — is that health care costs are a cyclone destined to lay waste to government finances. Health care is projected to cost the state $50 billion by 2013 — or about $15 billion more than is currently spent on the entire general fund. Meanwhile, employers have seen the storm blowing in and are bailing out.

Employers bailing out of providing health insurance and Pawlenty bailing out the General Fund with proceeds from the medical provider tax as the storm approaches.  This is not an issue  we can solve through back door budget games.