Dean Phillips, a Democratic House candidate in Minnesota, says that healthcare is a “moral right.” But he didn’t always offer it to his own employees.
Phillips, a progressive entrepreneur hoping to unseat incumbent Rep. Erik Paulsen, R-Minn., started Penny’s Coffee with his business partner in 2015. He has since expanded the company to two Minneapolis-based locations. He released a campaign ad touting Penny’s on Wednesday.
Confronted with the apparent discrepancy at a debate with Paulsen on Tuesday, Phillips said the charge was “not true.” But asked point blank in an interview with Forbes last year, “Does the coffee shop you’ve started offer health insurance?” Phillips replied, “No, we don’t.” In the same interview, the candidate also argued “healthcare should be a moral right.
A City Pages profile published in January noted that Phillips “dragged his feet for a year before providing a plan to full-time employees at Penny’s.”
Yet on the “Priorities” section of his campaign website, Phillips declares that “it’s time we make the moral decision to ensure every American has affordable, high-quality healthcare — no matter their age, geography or condition.”
“I will support immediate action that gets us closer to that goal — and I will not rest until it’s achieved,” says Phillips. Apparently that concern wasn’t so immediate when his own money and his own employees were involved.
Given that he’s clearly on the record admitting Penny’s didn’t always offer insurance, honesty would probably be the best approach for Phillips here — even if it makes for an odd juxtaposition with his unusual formula that healthcare is a “moral right.”
