Posted on 07/09/2009 6:05:03 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Former GOP Governor Helped Make 2006 Reform Reality.
BOSTON -- Three years after the inception of Massachusetts landmark health reform legislation, which required every citizen to buy insurance, NewsCenter 5s Ed Harding wondered what former Gov. Mitt Romney, a key political architect of the plan, thought of its progress. Call it protecting his legacy, well-earned pride, or seeing the glass as half-full, but Romney says Massachusetts deserves an A.
Its working like we had hoped it would work, the one-time republic presidential candidate said. We got nearly everybody in Massachusetts health insurance, which really, something people didn't think was possible.
Romney said the same can be done nationwide, though he concedes what many in the Bay State are grappling with now, that the hardest part of the reform debate is controlling costs. It is projected that within a decade health care will account for 20 percent of all money spent in the United States.
Currently, health care accounts for between 17 and 18 percent of the United States gross domestic product.
Its huge, said Romney. Weve got two challenges. One is to get everybody insured. Believe it or not that's the relatively easy job. The other job is to reign in the inflation associated with health care. We can do that too but it's a lot of work.
Romney points to a recent analysis by the pro-reform Massachusetts Taxpayers Association, showing that since near-universal coverage was implemented in 2006, state taxpayers have had to shell out an additional $88 million per year to insure an additional 430,000 citizens.
Some people say. Oh, it's expensive, but actually, it cost less than two percent of the state budget.
Romney is closely following the reform debate in Washington, DC, and pointed to President Barack Obamas proposal for a government-run so-called public plan option as a big mistake.
The current system with over 1,000 insurers in this country, is perfectly capable adequate to provide choice to people in America, Romney said.
The former governor declined to answer when Harding asked if health care is a right of a privilege in the United States. He did insist, however, that on a national level politicians ought to be able to create a system where every citizen has health insurance.
this ends any way in heck I would support Romney.....
I remember during the primaries when SLICK WILLARD said "I CAN'T WAIT TO GET MY HANDS ON IT" referring to the economy and not one of the media elites caught on.
I agree.
People often make the mistake to respond to words (as symbols) rather than to substance. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” means one thing when Ted Kennedy says it, and another thing if Eisenhower had said it.
Here is another example. Laissez faire economics was a central tenet of classical, 18th century, "liberalism." A central tenet of 20th century “liberal” thinking is the complete rejection of laissez faire economics. “Liberal” Hussein Obama totally rejects “liberal” Adam Smith. Before one can evaluate “liberal,” you have to know how the term is used.
My question is about “mandatory” insurance. I heard that under Romneycare you have to have insurance, or you have to be willing to pay with your own money, or you won't receive medical service. Duh. That's how it's supposed to work.
Oh, you’re absolutely right. MA is a microcosim of what’s ultimately going to happen with Obama as President. Deval Patrick and he are just alike and Patrick has already done a lot of damage to MA. Also, MA has a Democrat controlled legislature, just like our current Congress. Together, they’re going to ruin MA ... just like Obama, Pelosi and Reid are going to ruin our country.
New Hire...
So, all you Romney supporters........Still think he’s a conservative?
So it is your opinion that, if the congress and the President agree, they can institute no-warrant searches of your house, they can force you to testify against yourself, they can close down the churches, shut the newspapers, and put institute sharia law for common offenses like burglary, and the courts can do nothing to stop them?
That is wrong. As it stands, it reflects badly on Romney. Can any Romney supporters respond? I realize that this is a hostile forum. But I am willing to consider a response.
Maybe things were better before Romneycare. If so, what was that system like? How did it work? How does MA go back?
A question to critics of Romneycare is “what is the alternative?”
Here's a scenario designed to bring an important issue into focus. A very pregnant woman arrives at the doorsteps of a hospital in the dead of a Boston winter. She hasn't got a penny to her name. Should the hospital turn her away, or should they deliver her baby? I realize this scenario represents something like .00001% of medical decisions. However, this kind of story will be thrown into our face in newspapers, debates, etc. I think the answer is to reintroduce church affiliated hospitals or church charities in some way. If the kind Catholics (Baptists, Jews, etc.) take her in and deliver her baby, that is fine with me. If they get credit for their kindness, that is fine with me also.
From what I have seen and heard about him...he’s McCain with a better haircut.
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One huge difference. McCain (imho) is an honest man. Romney is not. McCain (like him or hate him) is what he is. Romney is whatever he thinks he needs to be to get elected.
What is sad that last election, so many conservative pundits were so horrified that McCain might be the nominee that they jumped on Romney’s bandwagon. Remember Laura Ingram’s introduction of Romney as a dinner where she said she was “proud to be introducing the one REAL conservative in the race”? Ugggh!
Misgivings? These aren't misgivings. Just look at his record for crying out loud.
Of course, you would probably vote for anyone and anything so long as it was "Republican."
And, regardless, both were, still are, and always will be unfit to serve as President.
As opposed to anything that was "Democrat"? Absolutely.
I don't make decisions within the plush confines of an ideologically pure bubble. I've had to compromise for every presidential vote since Reagan. That's just life. I'll take a conservative when I can get one, a Republican when I can't, and then a Libertarian...and finally a dead guy, before I'll vote for a rat.
To the extent the government wants to use the courts, for example to obtain criminal convictions, the judiciary has some leverage. The executive can't make the courts accept evidence that it obtained in violation of the Constitution as the courts interpret it. But a determined executive can certainly find ways around that limitation and there's nothing the courts can do about it.
The idea that the judiciary can be guardians of our freedom is absurd. Courts were never designed for that purpose and trying to get them to serve it is like trying to get skyscrapers to float. Congresses and Presidents have done many awful things to curtail freedom in this country. Just in the twentieth century we have had Wilson's sedition prosecutions, the internment of Japanese Americans and the Smith Act just to name a few of the low points. Courts haven't done a thing to curtail such abuses for the simple reason that they can't. We have to be guardians of our own freedom, with our votes and, if necessary with our guns. That's just brutal reality.
The judiciary has the power of persuasion. Nothing else. It is, to borrow the phrase Alex Bickle picked out of the Federalist Papers, the least dangerous branch. When courts make pronouncements that falsify the law and make no effort to persuade, those pronouncements should have no impact on the other branches of government. Judges don't have any more right to be heeded and obeyed than Op Ed columnists. If they make a good argument the people with the guns may listen to them. If not the most they can do is withhold judicial cooperation from an executive that rejects their wisdom.
An executive who chooses to obey an utterly unpersuasive judicial pronouncement can't escape responsibility for that choice. Power and responsibility go hand in hand.
All this is pretty basic. The drive to defend Mitt shouldn't make you blind to the elementary facts about the American constitutional order.
Here’s a scenario designed to bring an important issue into focus. A very pregnant woman arrives at the doorsteps of a hospital in the dead of a Boston winter. She hasn’t got a penny to her name. Should the hospital turn her away, or should they deliver her baby?
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Already covered under current law in 49 other states.
Legally, hospitals can NOT turn away someone that needs immediate care, they have to treat them (or deliver the baby in this instance.) The hospital will write her a bill, which she won’t pay. The hospital then eats the cost or the cost is paid by the state.
This is the “emergency room treatments” Obama is always talking about. The poor, instead of going to a doctor’s office, just show up at the emergency room for care (because the term “immediate care” can be stretched to cover everything from a headache on up hospitals are essentially put in the position of having to treat anyone that shows up in the emergency room for free.) THIS is the problem Obama is trying to solve by nationalizing healthcare. People that don’t have health insurance/coverage so they use the emergency room as their doctor’s office.
Since the rest of the system works pretty darned well (for the vast majority of people that do have health insurance), the obvious solution isn’t to overhaul the entire system, but just find a solution to this one problem. Find some way to help the poor get medical coverage AND let everyone else keep the health coverage they have now (and like).
Unlike Obama’s solution which is to throw everything out and create a new system from scratch (modeled on the system in Europe.)
And, regardless, both were, still are, and always will be unfit to serve as President.
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Oh I didn’t say I liked McCain. The point I was trying to make that on top of the bad judgement/liberal tendencies Romney has he is also not honest. He is a man that will tell you whatever you want to hear to get elected.
Slick Mitt does indeed describe him.
Gay “marriage” is an interesting topic from a federalist, or states’s rights perspective. I could entertain the notion of gay marriage for MA if that decision were restricted to MA and any other state making that choice. But as I understand it, a gay marriage in one state must be recognized in another. That is an incomplete federalism.
If it’s O.K. for MA to legislate that a man carry marry a man, then it should be O.K. for Texas to legislate that such men will be thrown in jail. If that were the case, it would be unwise for such men to travel to Texas. But that is the nature of federalism. Each state gets to make its own laws. There remains a legitimate way to overide state laws - a constitutional amendment.
Requiring all Americans to buy health insurance is a violation of the contracts clause of the 13th Amendment.
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