Mitt Romney for Health Czar

Now that health care reform has passed, the focus is moving on to implementation. It is a huge undertaking that aims to reshape a significant chunk of the U.S. economy. Setting up this public-private partnership will require creating new infrastructure, managing a lot of moving parts, and dealing with powerful corporations and industry blocs. So who should President Obama appoint to be his health care reform implementation czar?

If the shoe fits...

Conservatives already know that Romney is not one of them, nor has he ever been. He belongs in the same ash heap as the rest of the Olympia Snowes, John McCains, and Lindsey Grahams.

Many Massachusetts residents now have insurance coverage but can't find a physician.
…56 percent of Massachusetts physicians in internal medicine aren't accepting new patients.
…new patients fortunate enough to secure an appointment with a primary care doctor have an average waiting time of 44 days! .”

“Cahill bashes (MA) state -- and national -- health care reform law
State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill, an independent candidate for governor, today offered
a wide-ranging and scathing criticism of the state’s universal health care law, saying it is
bankrupting Massachusetts and will do the same nationally, if a similar plan is passed in
Congress.
"If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform
here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American
economy within four years,” Cahill said in a press conference in his office.
Echoing criticism leveled by Congressional Republicans in recent weeks, Cahill said, “It
is time for the president, the Democratic leadership, to go back to the drawing board and
come up with a new plan that does not threaten to bankrupt this country.”

“In his defense, Romney admitted to Fox that about half of the real costs of “extending
coverage to the uninsured” (aka forcing young, healthy people to buy expensive
insurance they don’t need) is covered by federal tax dollars. In other words, as expensive
as it is, without federal subsidies it would cost even more.
So when there’s a federal Obamacare plan, who do we taxpayers turn to for our
subsidies? China? The United Nations? Mr. Spock and the United Federation of Planets?”

“Mr. Romney's subsidized coverage is meanwhile doing what entitlements do: crowding
out private insurers, compounding the cost explosion, walking the state toward rationing.
So long as the former governor clings to these central points of his health plan, he's on
the wrong side of free-market policy and public opinion.

This isn't going away for Mr. Romney either, which is why he'd do better by writing off
his own plan as a mistake that Democrats have made worse, and replacing it with a
proposal that deregulates and reforms the private market to lower insurance costs
(thereby achieving greater coverage).”

From CATO (the whole article is worthwhile): “Before RomneyCare was enacted, estimates of the number of uninsured in
Massachusetts ranged from 372,000 to 618,000. Under the new program, about 219,000
previously uninsured residents have signed up for insurance. Of these, 133,000 are
receiving subsidized coverage, proving once again that people are all too happy to accept
something “for free,” and let others pay the bill. That is in addition to 56,000 people who
have been signed up for Medicaid. The bigger the subsidy, the faster people are signing
up. Of the 133,000 people who have signed up for insurance since the plan was
implemented, slightly more than half have received totally free coverage.

“Health Care Speechwriter for Edwards, Obama & Clinton Now Without Health Insurance”
I'm a critic because what Washington is talking about doing
has made health insurance unaffordable in Massachusetts.

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