At this point

Is this supposed to be reassuring?

AP Interview: Clinton on health care

WASHINGTON – Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that a mandate requiring every American to purchase health insurance was the only way to achieve universal health care but she rejected the notion of punitive measures to force individuals into the health care system.

“At this point, we don’t have anything punitive that we have proposed,” the presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“At this point”? That sounds ominous.

If she wanted to be reassuring, she’d explain how she’d institute safeguards that would keep such punitive measures from ever being enacted, no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

But there is a reason I find it impossible to say “welfare state” without also saying “police state.”