ping to 346
Mrreaganaut is echoing what I have essentially said all along. This was an exercise by a few think tank folks at Heritage, and is not something they were pushing like gang busters, so don't get out of sorts with them, they are still on our side.
The couple of guys in the think tank were essentially working out a plan with the premise that it must be conservatively based and viable under the current environment our health care system has found itself in the past few decades. As it is they came up with the best idea when such constraints were in place. The problem is those conditions cannot and will not allow for a purely Conservative plan, much less plan that would not immediately be open to abuse and modification in the real world.
The only Conservative approach is to change the conditions. Tort reform, regulation reduction, competition, tax incentives to treat indigents and the like are conservative approaches because they limit government and allow the free market and tax payers to decide how treat will be covered.
For example the 1986 law that has been mentioned here that requires hospitals to render emergency treatment was never intended in theory to allow for the treatment of colds and hang nails, but for true emergencies. Treat the life threatening condition, transfer when stable was the idea. The left of course never allowed for that to be followed. It became “You must treat anyone who darkens the doors”. A hospital cannot even direct you to the free clinic down the street.
As it is the Heritage plan was flawed even in the purity of the lab. It was interesting but hardly useful. the disturbing part is that anyone with any sense of the real world should know that by even introducing such an act you would open the lefty flood gates and end up with a disaster. MA proves this right in spades.
That is what I find funny about the Mitt defenders when they try and defend this fiasco. Ok it is not what Mitt intended, so you mean to tell me that a great mind like Mitt Romney did not see this coming? If he didn't he is a naive political buffoon, if he did he is an accomplice in the fleecing of the people and is showing his socialist streak.
No great choices but the only two the fit.
And that doesn't even get me started on the ‘but he was right in the beginning, the democrats screwed it all up” meme. If that was true he would not still be praising the plan's success even to this very day.