Free Republic

Obamacare dominated the 2010 midterms, driving its Democratic authors to a historic electoral shellacking. But since then, the issue has slipped quietly underground. Now it’s back, summoned to the national stage by the confluence of three disparate events: the release of new Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, the approach of Supreme Court hearings on the law’s constitutionality, and the issuance of a compulsory contraception mandate. COST Obamacare was carefully constructed to manipulate the standard ten-year cost projections of the CBO. Because benefits would not fully kick in for four years, President Obama could trumpet ten-year gross costs of less than...

Mitt Romney, in an op-ed published in 2009 at USA Today, still viewable at mittromneycentral.com, pushed Obama to do nationally what he did in RomneyCare, in Massachusetts. His words: "There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it." emphasis ours: Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical...

Our friend Andrew at Buzzfeed dug up something that should make America facepalm:

Forget Michigan. If Rick Santorum really wants to hand Mitt Romney his head he ought to challenge him in Massachusetts. It is here, not in Michigan, where Romney, governor for four years, made his political bones, first by running unsuccessfully against the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and then defeating Democrat Shannon O'Brien for governor in 2002. It is also here where thousands of people -- to their total surprise -- woke up the other day to find that Romney ran the state as a "severely conservative" governor for four years. Who knew? That was before he declined to run for...

Rick Santorum backed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2004. It was a tough race with Toomey mounting a credible, well-financed challenge. Toomey’s candidacy, by his own estimation, was one of the precursors to the Tea Party movement: The “battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party” between big spending moderates and committed conservatives that was evident in 2004 may have inspired subsequent Tea Party efforts, Toomey suggested. Despite losing out on key endorsements from leading Republican figures in 2004, Toomey believes his primary campaign created a strong foundation for conservative activism that translated into victory in 2010....

There are quite a few problems with Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's December 28 coverage ("New fee coming for medical effectiveness research") concerning a new fee (i.e., tax) which will imposed on health insurance companies for each person they cover starting tomorrow. Several times (twice in the body and once as seen above in the headline), the story refers to the assessment as a "medical effectiveness research" fee (without quotes). Just once, in the eleventh paragraph, does Alonso-Zaldivar call it by its far more widely-known name (written as indicated): "comparative effectiveness" research. But the item which stuck out like a sore thumb with...

Many politicians have talked of repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).  Mitt Romney has said nullifying the healthcare law would be one of his first actions if he was elected president.  However, rather than just repealing the law and going back to the status-quo, with minor changes, the American people should demand true reform.In 2001, Milton Friedman, the famed, Nobel-prize winning economist, published an article titled “How to Cure Health Care.” (Although worthy of serious consideration, Friedman’s analysis does not contain any explicit moral message, and is simply a policy analysis on healthcare.  For a more in-depth...

In late spring 2005, Mitt Romney gathered with a dozen top policy and political advisers in a conference room near the governor’s suite on the third floor of the State House. For two years, they had grappled with the abstruse complexities of health care reform, sifting data, evaluating input from experts, and testing theories to craft a plan that would expand coverage to nearly everyone in the state and not break the bank. This was a bold move for a first-term Republican governor, some of whose more conservative advisers doubted the wisdom of a foray deep into policy turf long...

On Thursday, the healing begins. Mitt Romney won’t be apologizing for Romneycare in his health care speech Thursday. But he will be addressing it, according to a Romney aide.“He’ll address it, but the main focus of the speech will be what his plans will be going forward,” the aide tells National Review Online…“What will be clear is that number one, he’s got the same position as every other 2012er when it comes to the repeal of Obamacare,” the aide says. “Secondly, he’ll be the first of those candidates to lay out his plan for replacing Obamacare with reforms that will...

If anyone really needed any confirmation of this, look no further than to the comments of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. In an appearance on Fox News, Santorum called ObamaCare the issue that would “fundamentally change America going forward.” Afterwards, Santorum shifted to attack mode, railing against recently announced contender Mitt Romney: “We’d better have a candidate who is out there and very, very strong in opposition to government-run health care and focuses on a health care system that centers on you, not on the government,” Santorum, who supported Romney in 2008. “And that, I think, is a problem for...

I asked Gov. Romney if I could ask him a question. After he told me that this was OK, I posed the following question to him: “You have stated your intention to spearhead the effort to repeal the ‘worst aspects’ of Obamacare, does this include the repeal of the individual mandate and pre-existing exclusion?” The Governor’s answer: “No.” Gov. Romney went on to explain that he does not wish to repeal these aspects because of the deleterious effect it would have on those with pre-existing conditions in obtaining health insurance.