Just wanted to take a minute and share with you a great post on Connecticut Local Politics:

• For the full post, click here.

EAST HARTFORD — Sen. Chris Dodd, accompanied by Rep. John Larson and a panel of health care experts, held a town-hall style forum today at Goodwin College’s beautiful new riverside campus in East Hartford. The forum was the first of several planned events on Dodd’s health care "listening tour," which is an attempt to gauge public opinion and need before Congress and the administration undertake a major health care initiative.

Both Dodd and Larson spoke briefly about the kind of health care program they wanted to craft. Dodd emphasized that any new health care plan had to meet three criteria: It must be universal, it must be affordable, and it must focus not just on treatment, but on prevention as well.

Dodd drew contrasts between the current initiative and the failed effort to institute a national health care plan in 1993, claiming that there were fewer "bright lines" sharply dividing people on the issue now, and that the huge health care costs of the auto industry, among others, made reform more obvious and urgent. Larson also spoke animatedly of the failure of 1993, saying that "Fifteen years ago, there was not enough emphasis on what [the people] had to say."