SIOUX CITY — Anyone who has the discipline to lose 110 pounds has earned at least some level of gravitas when it comes to talking about preventive health care.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, made the most of a two-man show at the historic Orpheum Theater Thursday night in downtown Sioux City, showing that he belonged on the stage with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The two candidates were the only ones from the GOP field to attend a 90-minute Divided We Fail AARP-sponsored session focused on health care and long-term financial security issues. An estimated 700 people attended the event.

Huckabee, who famously lost those pounds after learning he had adult-onset diabetes, offered some intriguing ideas on the preventive side of the medical equation, including support of measures that would provide employees with time to work out on the job.

“You have smoke breaks for smokers,” Huckabee said, noting that obvious irony of providing time to people who are engaging in an activity that hikes health care while eschewing the notion of exercise on the job as something of a luxury.

Huckabee compared the U.S. health-care situation to an NFL football game with “22 people on the field in desperate need of rest and 70,000 in the stands in desperate need of exercise.”

“Something is clearly wrong with the system,” Huckabee said.

He also suggested a voluntary one-time buyout program for Social Security that the Arkansan says can help salvage the troubled system.

Huckabee, as even McCain acknowledged, was almost hyper-prepared on health-care numbers.

In fact, former Carroll Daily Times Herald reporter Bret Hayworth, now the political writer and columnist for the Sioux City Journal, called the event for Huckabee in a Weblog post Thursday night entitled “Huckabee hits it.”

“The winner of the GOP `debate,’ OK forum, concluded 80 minutes ago in Sioux City tonight was Mike Huckabee,” Hayworth writes. “While John McCain didn’t have any misstatements in the 90-minute session, Huckabee performed well. He got off the most applause lines, and while both guys drew some laughs in what was an event devoid of tension (or high stakes), Huckabee had a few more chucklers. Most importantly, he was ripping off lines that shows he was well prepared for the forum on health care and financial security issues.”

For his part, McCain put in another solid, classy performance. He made the case for health-saving accounts and said the nation shouldn’t fund children’s health-care costs with a $1-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes.

“Help me out,” McCain said. “We’re going to help children’s health by making sure Americans smoke?”

McCain – who pledged to hold two news conferences a week as president as one way to promote more accountability – said Hollywood needs to move in that direction with pulling smoking from movies.

Huckabee and McCain agreed on a number of issues. Both said medical providers’ income should be more closely tied to outcomes and that there should be incentives for doctors who can get their patients’ blood pressures and other key life indicators in solid shape.

McCain, whose experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam are well chronicled, spent some time talking about the breakdown of what he believes is a sacred pact with veterans. One major problem with the war in Iraq, McCain said, is that the administration did not plan for the health-care concerns of veterans on the back end.

The Arizona senator ended his own remarks by making the case that health-care and financial matters are connected with what he views as runaway federal spending.
Striking a common theme on the campaign trail, McCain said he would go after pork-barrel spending.

“I will make the people who are authors of those pork-barrel project famous,” McCain said. “You will know their names.”