“It seems like there were two Pawlentys with regard to health care,” said state Rep. Paul Thissen, a DFL leader who served on the governor’s bipartisan Health Transformation Task Force…

Health care consultant Michael Scandrett, staff director of Pawlenty’s health care citizens’ forum, said he detected a notable change in the governor’s perspective as he came closer to a run for national office.

To Scandrett, the same governor who had introduced model reforms for the care of the chronically ill morphed into a fiscal hawk focused on eliminating rather than reforming costly programs.

“It was more slash and burn than reform,” Scandrett said.