Pawlenty's health-care claims during debate get mixed ratings

Two fact-checking news websites looked into statements that former Minn. governor Tim Pawlenty made at Thursday night's GOP presidential candidate debate.

PoliGraph/Minnesota Public Radio: Pawlenty Right On Obama's Health Care Record
During the first Republican presidential debate of the 2012 campaign, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty reminded viewers that President Barack Obama was against a requirement that everyone buy health insurance before he was for it. Just a few years ago, Obama "promised the nation he would do health care reform focused on cost containment, he opposed the individual mandate," Pawlenty said on May 5, 2011. Pawlenty got this one right. While campaigning for the White House, then-Sen. Barack Obama wanted everyone in the country to have health care - he just didn't want to require people to buy it (Richert, 5/6).

Politifact: Tim Pawlenty Quotes Obama's Words On Health Care From The Iowa Caucuses
[Pawlenty opted] to attack President Barack Obama's health care plan, calling the new law "a top-down, government-run, centralized, limited choice, limited option system." "President Obama stood in Iowa in 2008 on the night of the Iowa caucuses and he promised the nation that he would do health care reform focused on cost containment, he opposed an individual mandate, and he said he was going to do it with Republicans. He broke that promise," Pawlenty said. We've investigated the charge that the law is a "government takeover" of health care and rated it False. (In fact, it was our 2010 Lie of the Year.) The health care law does dramatically increase federal regulation of health insurance, but it leaves in place private insurance and private health care providers. Some have said the plan is the same as the one Romney supported in Massachusetts back in 2002, a claim we've rated Mostly True (5/6).