Posted on 12/27/2011 11:20:59 AM PST by nickcarraway
If anybody actually cares about integrity and freedom, this latest news should be big trouble for Newt Gingrich. Somebody (I need to find out who) dug up this old memo from Gingrich praising Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan in fulsome terms, and especially praising its individual mandate to buy health insurance:
The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage, and subsidies will be made available to those individuals who cannot afford insurance on their own. We agree strongly with this principle, but the details are crucial when it comes to the structure of this plan. … In our estimation, Massachusetts residents earning little more than $30,000 a year are in jeopardy of being priced out of the system. In the event that this occurs, Governor Romney will be in grave danger of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Mike Dukakis, whose 1988 health plan was hailed as a save-all but eventually collapsed when poorly-devised payment structures created a malaise of unfulfilled promises. We propose that a more realistic approach might be to limit the mandate to those individuals earning upwards of $54,000 per year.
On one hand, this isn’t the most astonishing news: Gingrich has been quoted for 17 years in favor of some sort of individual mandate, and this 2006 citation isn’t even the most recent one. On the other hand, Gingrich has insisted that his proposal was something a little different — some sort of “bond” that rich people would put up — and, also, that he really started moving away from even that “bond” mandate after a while because, really, the reason he was for a mandate was in order to have a conservative alternative to Hillarycare in 1994. At other times he has tried hard to play down or soften the edges of his support for a mandate. But this is unequivocal, and it is within the past six years, and it shows not a single hesitation about undermining individual liberty. Indeed, Gingrich’s only complaint is a class-warfare-inducing lament: Romney stuck the mandate on lower-middle-income earners, whereas Gingrich only would apply it to middle-middle-income earners. Gee, what a relief! (Not!)
Even worse, Gingrich is to the left of Romney on Romney’s own health plan. Romney at worst has only tentatively recommended Romneycare as a whole as a model for the nation; and this year, he has become like a broken record saying he would never impose a mandate via the federal government, and that Romneycare was an example of state-level federalism in action, unique to the circumstances of Massachusetts. Gingrich, on the other hand, wrote this: “The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts. The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system.” Those lines led directly into his discussion of the mandate, which Gingrich described as an example of requiring “personal responsibility.”
All of which leads back to what I said in my May 17 column here on this site, namely that Gingrich and Romney both flunk conservative political philosophy. I repeat now what I wrote then: “[T]he issue here isn’t utility, but liberty. Mussolini ‘made the trains run on time,’ but that should never have justified his authoritarianism. Essential liberty must never be sacrificed on some central planner’s altar of efficiency.”
Or, for that matter, on some former Speaker’s warped notion of what does and doesn’t qualify as “personal responsibility.”
Why don’t you read Newt’s plan on his page before guaranteeing me anything. I see no reason to believe Newt would renege on this plan which is not about keeping Obamacare.
http://www.newt.org/solutions/healthcare
He was making a quip about left-wing social engineering vs. right-wing social engineering. He was just trying to make his point in a linguistically clever way but it went over many people’s heads.
I remember the cowardly Republican establishment throwing Newt under the bus because the press had turned the public against them just like they did Nixon, Palin, Clarence Thomas, and Dick Cheney. Once he lost the support of his own party, he was finished.
Newt was the most effective Republican ever to take it to the left and they had to destroy him. Now the cowards that betrayed him and the leftists that attacked him with 80 bogus ethics charges and fake stories about divorce papers to a dying woman don’t want him anywhere near the reins of power, where it is possible they haqve a lot of well-deserved payback comin’, so they are attacking him by trying to turn the base against him, and you sit here sucking it up with a giant straw.
I have never heard anyone who wasn't leftist use that phrase. Can you show anyone who has?
You do realize that medical care is a government regulated monopoly right?
Maybe we should go back to the days when the barber or the local bar fly was the only medical care available.
Been there when the only doc was also the local drunk. But he did work cheap.
Government certainly has its hand in medical care. At the same time, there are “private” hospitals.
Does it make sense for me to walk through WalMart’s doors without the ability to pay?
You really want Clinton's sex buddy to be president and his Lewinsky to be first lady?
You sound unhinged... There is an anti-American foreign-born Marxist in the White House embarking on his own personal Cloward-Piven style deconstruction of the United States, while he and his justice department act outside the law when they’re supposed to be “upholding” it, and you want to lecture me about who was diddling who back in the 1990’s. Not impressed...
And your answer is too put Pelosi and Clinton in charge of the country? Gingrich is airhead traitor socialist. Why is a white socialist going to damage the country less than a black one? Gingrich wouldn’t have to try to appease the right in this country, he’d just ignore it. But, your Gingrich/Romney boys will never be able to beat Obama.
Okay, do you believe everything on Romney’s web site too? They tell us whatever they want to hear to get elected. Why would you make excuses for someone who hates you? Newt had been proven to be a liar and traitor. I am a conservative. I will not vote for Gingrich or Romney no matter how much money they spend or lies they tell.
Voting for Newt.
There is no such thing. Hospitals, Doctors any health practitioner must have a Government license.
When I was young there were private hospitals, mostly charitable owned by churches. Little charity was handed out, you had money, or insurance, you got in, else you didn't. I was born at home as was my brother, doctor delivered, no idea what that cost, but my father was erring 50 cents a day at the time.
While I understand what you’re driving at, there are hospitals that are run by businesses and not by government. These would be “private”. There are also hospitals owned by religious and other organizations that are run as non-profits (whatever that means).
I assume various levels of government run clinics and hospitals, as well.
There are a few that do not accept medicare in an attempt to get away from regulation, but they still must be licensed and operate only with government permission. Soon to be totally controlled whether you like it or not.
That’s really not the point, but it instead makes the point. Why should anyone walk into a hospital expecting anything without the ability to pay?
The ability to pay is no longer necessary, the Black Robed Kings have so decreed. The point is if you were only paying the actual cost for service you might be able to afford it. The sad fact is for any major illness only the very rich can afford it.
I had a doctor that would not accept Medicare patients, in fact she couldn’t, but she would take my cash payment and I was glad to pay. For the sum of $200.00 to $250.00 I could get a complete physical which took her sometime more than an hour, because she went over everything. Sadly I no longer have that option, most doctors won’t even talk to you if you are on Medicare, even if you have other insurance.
No one gives you a choice about getting old, if you live long enough it happens. I lived during times when no one could go to the hospital, without insurance, because a room was $18.00 a day and most people made $8.00 a day or less, some like my mother made $3.00 a day for a six day week.
My first job was 15 cents an hour. So I know about hard times.
I planned for this upcoming healthcare change as best as I could, I had everything I could foresee fixed or treated. I couldn’t amass enough money to take care of a serious problem, so I don’t plan on any more hospital visits where their top priority is to get old people to sign a DNR.
Awesome post, itsahoot!
Our parents knew what they could afford and what they couldn’t. The same with me. My first job was 19cents an hour on a 20 hour part-time week. I made it stretch.
When I broke a thumb playing basketball, we didn’t go to the hospital. We went to old doc Brown’s office. He xrayed it there, prepped it there, removed a bone chip there, and billed it there. It was the goodly sum of 90 bucks, but dad paid it straight up.
That’s how they held health care costs down. My Dad, the doc, and one clerk.
Actually we used a lot of turpentine with kerosene filling in when we were short of turpentine. Grandad used it on everything.
I would hate to see the world backup that far, but at least it would be a place that I would recognize. Millions died of the flu an other simple diseases that we never see anymore, but they are just taking a little break, and soon will be back with a fury, I fear.
I have hunted many a rabbit and squirrel, and have at one time or another eaten about any animal that walked or flew, but now I prefer to get my meat wrapped and cut, gone all soft in my old age.
I’m in a big deer-hunt area, but my favorite is still rabbit. I’m pretty fond of wild duck, goose, turkey, too.
Deer is OK, but best as jerky. No other jerky touches it.
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