Mitch Romney made an important speech yesterday that pretty much proves yet again what I've said for some time - he's a decent man who is probably the most vulnerable and beatable GOP candidate in a presidential run against Barack Obama except Ron Paul.
One of Mitt Romney's major weak points is RomneyCare, the mandated health insurance legislation he pushed through in Massachusetts when he was governor, and the direct predecessor and model for Obamacare.
It's been a dismal and costly failure on a number of counts, and the obvious move would have been to repudiate it. Instead, Governor Romney chose to double down.
In a truly awful speech yesterday in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Governor Romney not only defended the legislation he signed as governor,he inadvertently offered a stirring endorsement of ObamaCare.
The governor, you see, still believes in the individual mandate, the concept of forcing people to buy insurance or else pay a penalty with the idea that they will subsidize the uninsured, the so-called 'free riders.' This is exactly the principle behind ObamaCare, no matter how Romney tries to spin it.
Obamacare bans insurers from taking account of customers’ pre-existing conditions in setting premiums, a major cost raiser in itself that penalizes people who have maintained their health,violates the fundamental premise of actuarial practice and defies logic by giving people an incentive to avoid good health practices or buy insurance until they become ill. It requires everybody to buy an insurance product regardless of need or inclination, something unique in the history of our Republic. And of course, it raises taxes and premiums to subsidize those who claim they can't afford to purchase insurance. RomneyCare in Massachusetts law has all of these features.
No wonder the Wall Street Journal suggested that Romney's best shot might be to knock Joe Biden off the ticket as become Obama's running mate!
Let's go to the data, all of which are state-reported, in search of evidence of Mr. Romney's "success."The only good news we can find is that the uninsured rate has dropped to 2% today from 6% in 2006. Yet four out of five of the newly insured receive low- or no-cost coverage from the government. The subsidies will cost at least $830 million in 2011 and are growing, conservatively measured, at 5.1% a year. Total state health-care spending as a share of the budget has grown from about 16% in the 1980s to 30% in 2006 to 40% today. The national state average is about 25%.
The safety-net fund that was supposed to be unwound, well, wasn't. Uncompensated hospital care rose 5% from 2008 to 2009, and 15% from 2009 to 2010, hitting $475 million (though the state only paid out $405 million). "Avoidable" use of emergency rooms—that is, for routine care like a sore throat—increased 9% between 2004 and 2008. Meanwhile, unsubsidized insurance premiums for individuals and small businesses have climbed to among the highest in the nation.
Like Mr. Obama's reform, RomneyCare was predicated on the illusion that insurance would be less expensive if everyone were covered. Even if this theory were plausible, it is not true in Massachusetts today. So as costs continue to climb, Mr. Romney's Democratic successor now wants to create a central board of political appointees to decide how much doctors and hospitals should be paid for thousands of services.
The Romney camp blames all this on a failure of execution, not of design. But by this cause-and-effect standard, Mr. Romney could push someone out of an airplane and blame the ground for killing him. Once government takes on the direct or implicit liability of paying for health care for everyone, the only way to afford it is through raw political control of all medical decisions.
The WSJ has it exactly right - it's not only the substance behind Romney Care, it's the philosophy - the idea of Big Government technocracy. That philosophy has failed spectacularly, and frankly there's not all that much difference between Governor Romney's version of it and President Barack Obama's.
The RomneyCare debacle is bad enough, but it's far from Mitt Romney's only weak point. As president of Bain Capital, he made a number of moves that involved the wholesale outsourcing of American jobs overseas, a TV commercial that almost writes itself.
Then there's his Mormon faith, to be honest about the matter. While that's certainly no problem for me personally, there are a lot of Evangelicals to whom that's going tobe a very big deal, just as Romney's changing statements of issues like abortion and same sex marriage are going to be a very big deal to social conservatives.
We already have one Harvard educated Big Government proponent in DC, thank you. I doubt that the American people are going to want to replace him with another of the same ilk just because he has an R after his name.
he's a decent man who is probably the most vulnerable and beatable GOP candidate in a presidential run
ReplyDeleteand that is why the media will push him down the throat of american voters, and he may very well get the R nomination. as we all know that R want so desparately to be liked by D, but never will be, and the vast majority of americans lack the knowledge or testicular fortitude to nominate and vote for what is best for what is left of this nation. they just will not do it.
OT
glad you got in a few essays before sabbath.
Actually, I think Romney is toast, since the WSJ and the Republican establishment National Review crowd are throwing him overboard.
ReplyDeleteThe new Dem-Lite darling is going to be Mitch Daniels if he gets into it..someone who is fairly charisma challenged and has enough baggage that O will beat him decisively.
IMO a lot of the GOP establishment is more than willing to flush 2012 down the toilet to open the door for Jeb Bush in 2016.
The only thing is, if they're successful and another 'moderate' RINO gets the 2012 nomination, the GOP will be a minority third party by then.
I still hope Sarah Palin is going to get into this thing at some point, after a number of the marginal players self-destruct.
Regards,
Rob
IMO a lot of the GOP establishment is more than willing to flush 2012 down the toilet to open the door for Jeb Bush in 2016.
ReplyDeleteAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
LL screams as he runs from the room!!!!!!!
Obamacare bans insurers from taking account of customers’ pre-existing conditions in setting premiums, a major cost raiser in itself that penalizes people who have maintained their health,violates the fundamental premise of actuarial practice and defies logic by giving people an incentive to avoid good health practices or buy insurance until they become ill.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of the above.
But I would point out that, in my view, those of us who have had employer-based insurance for some 20 years and then go out to get a private policy should not be penalized for pre-existing conditions. Furthermore, sometimes pre-existing conditions are genetic or idiopathic, thus having nothing to do with how one took care of oneself.
The issue of pre-existing conditions is an important one for me. I pay $269/month for catastrophic coverage; my husband, with pre-existing conditions which have been under control for nearly two decades, has to pay %700/month. One day, I sat down and figured out how much we have paid in health insurance premiums over our lifetimes so far (including what our employers paid on our behalf). The amount was over a $1,000,000, not including co-pays, which were substantial, particularly when my husband needed brain surgery for a benign tumor.
Once my husband and I cross the Medicare threshhold in a few years, pre-existing conditions will no longer affect our premiums, but the cost of our care will likely skyrocket before our lives end.
In my view, health-insurance does need some tweaking. But not the massive change that Obama and Romney have imposed on us.
If I have to buy car insurance, why should I not have to buy health insurance (as a civilian)? Or should all kinds of insurance be optional?
ReplyDeleteHello Nazar,
ReplyDeleteActually, you don't have to buy car insurance.
You can choose not to own or lease a car ( a viable option in cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco, among many others). Or in most states, including California, you have the option of posting a bond to cover basic liability with your state's Department of Motor vehicles.
Actually, all insurance is optional - fire, liability, auto, Life, etc...except the insurance mandated under RomneyCare and ObamaCare.
We've never had a situation where any government, state of federal, has demanded that you buy a private product or face a mandatory fine.
BTW, you might be interested to know that President Obama wanted to force you and our other warriors to privately purchase their own medical insurance coverage and make wounded service personnel pay for their own medical care instead of the VA providing it free of charge. Believe it or not.
Had he succeeded, you can imagine what the premiums for a Marine fighting in Kandahar would take out of an already skimpy paycheck.
Regards,
Rob