Free Republic

in his own words, unreal

The portrait of a health care reformerBen SmithOctober 10, 2011 Governor Mitt Romney's official portrait in the Massachusetts State House — unveiled in 2009 — pictures him seated with various meaningful objects, including a folder on the desk behind him. That folder, the AP wrote at the time, is "a leather bill binder emblazoned with a medical seal, symbolizing the first-in-the-nation universal health care law he signed in April 2006."It is, a reader reminds me, rather strong evidence that Romney considered the law his crowning policy achievement.

  The big news yesterday on the health care policy front is that the 11th Circuit case against the individual mandate is headed to the Supreme Court before the 2012 election, not after. This means a decision about the constitutionality of the individual mandate is likely to come in mid-2012, after the Republicans have chosen a nominee but well before the election ramp up. This is good political news for nearly everyone in the race on the Republican side, with one obvious exception: Mitt Romney.Let’s back up a moment to explain why. There’s one line that Romney used in Florida...

Move over Daniels, step aside Trump, Mitt is back and he’s grabbing the headlines with an agenda to get the health-care monkey off his back in time to win the crucial New Hampshire and Florida primaries. He announced today that he’ll showcase his plan “to repeal and replace Obamacare” next Thursday at the University of Michigan’s Cardiovascular Center. Obamacare is hated by GOP primary-voters, and so is Mass-Care, the somewhat-similar Massachusetts healthcare plan that was pushed into law by then-Governor Romney. White House officials and rival GOP candidates have gleefully tagged Romney and his Mass-Care plan as one of Obamacare’s...

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) "would never consider" endorsing Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president again in 2012 unless Romney repudiates the health reforms he sought as governor, a source close to DeMint said Thursday. A source close to the conservative icon emphasized that, despite comments to The Hill indicating that Romney shouldn't shoulder all the political blame for the Massachusetts healthcare plan, DeMint wouldn't endorse Romney again unless he admits the plan was mistaken. "It's obvious Jim was just trying to be nice to the guy he backed over McCain, as many conservatives did in 2008," the source said. "But...

Gov. Deval Patrick is absolutely right: Don’t blame Cleve Killingsworth for your insurance premiums going up so high, so fast. Blame the man who’s truly responsible — Deval Patrick. Killingsworth is the Miami Heat of Massachusetts health care. It’s hard to believe someone that expensive could suck that bad. But as offensive as Killingsworth’s $11 million buyout may be, AFL-CIO president and Blue Cross Blue Shield board member Robert Haynes had it right: “With $13 billion in revenue, it’s like pennies,” he said of the board’s compensation. Complaining about Killingsworth’s incompetence is like complaining about a leaky bathtub on the...

Anyone who wants to see the end result of ObamaCare need look no further than the Massasschussets version of it, nearly identical in every aspect to ObamaCare. When the Bay State passed its health-reform law in 2006, 9 percent of non-elderly adults lacked insurance; that's now down to 5 percent. The law didn't reduce expensive emergency-room use as predicted. Instead, emergency-room visits have climbed by 9 percent, or about 3 million visits, from 2004 to 2008. But it's bankrupting the state, while the pressures on small businesses and on health-care insurers and providers continue to build toward the breaking point....

If Massachusetts is the laboratory for ObamaCare, consider this an explosion. The Boston Globe reports that employers have begun doing precisely what everyone knew they would do when insurance prices spiked: dump health plans. Companies that used to offer health-care coverage are paying the fines and saving money by dumping their employees into state-run coverage (via Newsalert): The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the stateÂ’s already-stressed...

Well the Far left finally got what they wanted... More socialism. It was no surprise to me. Whenever we have prosperity, the government grows bigger and bigger. When the economy recedes and when jobs and opportunities become scare (usually the result of said government reaching its tentacles out to destroy our God given freedoms both economic and personal.) The government becomes bigger and bigger and even more massive the more so. It seems that the only answers the Democrats have to our problems is even more socialism. Since the early part of the last decade I have known that it...

The former Massachusetts governor enacted something very similar to the Obama health plan. It isn't working well. BY GRACE-MARIE TURNER Former Massachusetts governor and likely 2012 presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has been on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our time. Mr. Romney claimed earlier this month on "Fox News Sunday" that the Massachusetts health reform plan he signed into law in 2006 is "the ultimate conservative plan." But there are many similarities between it and the ObamaCare loathed by conservative voters. Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a...

MASSACHUSETTS'S UNIVERSAL healthcare law turned one in April. To survive, its guardians have had to make many changes, each of which has increased current and future government spending, increased the government's role in regulating the healthcare market, decreased individual responsibility to purchase insurance, and made certain that the plan will fall far short of achieving universal coverage. The promise of the law was simple and seductive: Require people to purchase health insurance, make the insurance affordable, or at least tax-deductible, and then fine those who don't comply. Subsidies could come from the current money devoted to the Uncompensated Care Pool...

Damn it's been a good week. Posting two of the most appropriate pieces of artwork - the Obamacare zeppelin going down, and the minutemen hero bill. Here's the bill. Front side first. For the whole series of Zero themed artwork, go here: "Flickr Archive of Zero Artwork"

(snip) Although some in the party believe that it should be tilting right in whom to support in future elections, he said, "I will be by and large supporting conservative Republicans" but would not rule out backing some moderates, referencing former President Reagan. "He was the one who coined the term 'the big tent.' He also said that you don't build something by subtraction. So we welcome people who agree with us on most issues. Some will be very conservative on some issues. Some will be less so on others. We welcome you into the party." (snip) "We have a...

Mitt Romney is an empty suit. He puts his finger up and sees which way the political winds are blowing, then takes a position. Mitt signed MassCare (with Ted Kennedy no less in the background smiling about it) into existence in 2006, and it has been a proven failure. There are plenty of stories and analyses out there describing the abject failure that MassCare is. The essential storyline is that MassCare is basically Obamacare in one state. That state has gone bankrupt trying to give everyone there universal coverage, and the result of putting so many more people into the...

In recent months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has hit the speaking circuit like a man determined to be president who knows he needs to get an early start. Last week brought news that Romney had secured a major publisher for his forthcoming book, “No Apology: The Case for America’s Greatness,” in which he stands bravely against all those who insist that the U.S. is a mediocre country that’s done more harm than good. Even before the recent Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford flameouts, Romney looked like the right’s favorite son for 2012. He’d garnered National Review’s 2008 endorsement as...

BOSTON — Nearly 100,000 Massachusetts taxpayers have been fined for failing to obtain health insurance, even as a major survey concludes the effort to create near-universal coverage in the state is meeting key goals. Five percent of taxpayers failed to obtain health coverage last year, and more than half of those — about 97,000 — were forced to forfeit their personal exemption — worth $219 — after it was determined they could have afforded health care. Two percent of taxpayers — about 62,000 — were found not to earn enough for health care, avoiding fines. Under the landmark law, taxpayers...