Posted on 03/27/2009 10:55:40 AM PDT by RobinMasters
Praise Mitt Romney. Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the "universal" health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country. It is proving to be instructive, as Mr. Romney's foresight previews what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy and Pete Stark are cooking up for everyone else.
In Massachusetts's latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality -- i.e., price controls. As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I wonder what Mr. Romney’s response to this will be.
We shall see.
No way. I have read on FR that Mitt Care was brilliant and he was a conservative. Can we trust the WSJ?
We can make sure. Mitt will never admit that he was wrong just like he will never admit that was wrong to support Bush’s bailout.
It really does boil down to an interesting choice.
With private health care, the vast majority of people can pay the much lower costs associated with a system free of insurance and government. But only the wealthy can afford the most expensive care. And only the very poorest will have to take County health care, with its simplistic approach, i.e., if there is a problem with a tooth, pull it.
With public and private health care, the vast majority of people get average care, but the system is unstable as it both costs much more and accumulates debt. The lower middle class get lower quality than private care, and the very poor are still reliant on County health care. The wealthy pay cash for higher quality private care.
With mostly government health care, most people get poorer quality care, at lower direct cost, but much higher taxation and continual decline in service. Encouraging death as a cost saving measure enters the picture. The very poor are part of the problem, but get no substantial improvement in the quality of care. If the wealthy are prevented from getting higher quality care, they will leave their country to get it.
So in the final analysis, private care without government or insurance gives the best results to the most people, and innovates to provide better service at lower cost.
Public and private combined is unsustainable, though provides some better services at substantially higher prices.
Government health care is unsustainable, and will likely experience a worldwide collapse before long, and the longer it exists, the lower the quality of service becomes until no service is provided at all, and the higher its price becomes, until there is no money left to support the system.
Coercing me to enter into a contract just because I’m breathing, violates the 13th Amendment.
This is the reason that Romney will never be able to get the nomination or win a general. He had some free market ideas and a good solution to the health care cost/uninsured problem. Gingrich has offered many similar ideas. But Romney he was not the dictator of MA and had to compromise too much in the process. After he left office it just became worse. His name will be forever tied to a boondoggle that little resembles his solutions. He can’t run against government health care (beacuse he help to expand it MA) and he can’t make an argument that it works (because it doesn’) . He could have been a contenda...
Oh, yeah, I remember those arguments. Government forced healthcare insurance at the point of a gun is “free markets.” Romney is an ass.
yefragetuwrabrumuy sums up the situation very well. The only long term sustainable and good sytem is private payer health care, but there will always be poor who will be left out. The right must make a better effort at explaining the role of church and charity, and a better effort of carrying it out. Government healthcare will collapse. Americans need to relearn the role of government.
I don’t hold it against Romney, a conservative in a leftist state, attempting this. It was an experiment that will prove useful in its difficulties.
It boggles the mind how many people twist themselves into knots to defend this guy.
The industry has been co-opted. Choice, flexibility and innovation will be squeezed out of our system.
The only gentleman who makes any sense to me is this guy, J. Dennis Wolfe. He is all in favor of us industry and choice healthcare folks taking our fight into the open:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20070910/ai_n19514343
If you hear him speak, he’s almost Rush-like for the health care and insurance worlds. And he’s a very nice, self-effacing person too.
The poor are not left out. There are (or used to be before big government got involved) charity and religious hospitals and clinics. Also, county or community hospitals. Bring them back. Health care is left to the states and people by the constitution. It’s a free market enterprise. If government gets involved at all, it should be at the local level.
Excellent analysis.
Don’t we already have free health care, however...it’s called the emergency room. If you can’t pay they still fix you.
Ronald Reagan on Universal Healthcare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0NWqvRidlk&feature=related
I don’t know how correct your prediction is, but I seriously do hope that you are correct about Mitt never going all the way politically. There’s still a lot of controversy about Mitt when he was Massachusetts Governor that isn’t fully known at the national level. Also, after President Reagan, the final GOP Presidential candidates have been more to the “political left” each and every time, and this is seriously not the political trend that all of the GOP should be taking!
I don't think we should be going after Republicans or conservatives until the prez primaries. Look at how we ended up with McCain.
I followed Romney's attempts at Mass Health Care, and I suspect it would eventually fail. But he also tried to put some market mechanisms into place that may prove instructive when we try to deal with Obamacare. It was a conservative effort at dealing with the public's demand for such a program, and , I do not hold it against him that he was dealing with a fanatic leftwing population in Mass. The Mass effort isn't a faiure yet, and I want the public to see what rationing is all about.
This is why Romney can’t get conservatives to trust him. Not his religion.
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