The Mitt Romney Thread

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Trump: Romney is going to lose (in an interview with Meghan McCain)

... he’s going to lose. He doesn’t resonate, you know? Or he would have won last time, in all fairness to your father! He was scheduled to win last time, and he didn’t because your father outdid him. You understand. I watched [Romney] make a speech, and it was all these little trivial statements.

Edited April 22, 2011 by \

[웃 910]

Romney to give major health care address Thursday in Michigan.

Complete with PowerPoint presentation, frontrunner will "lay out plan to repeal and replace Obamacare."

2PM ET at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor.

Halperin's Take: This is smart. Romney won't back off his past statements on his Massachusetts health care law Thursday. The plan he is releasing is an updated version of the one he ran on in 2008.

Romney's rivals believe health care makes him unnominatable. Romney has failed so far in convincing the media and others that he can explain his record on this issue. By putting out a detailed plan well before any of his opponents, Romney has his best chance to move the conversation from the past to the future. Hillary Clinton tried to do the same thing on Iraq in 2008 and almost succeeded; and/but right now Romney doesn't have anyone standing in his way for the nomination who is as politically formidable as Barack Obama was four years ago.

Read more: http://thepage.time..../#ixzz1M0IH1dIQ

Edited May 11, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Romney to give major health care address Thursday in Michigan.

Complete with PowerPoint presentation, frontrunner will "lay out plan to repeal and replace Obamacare."

2PM ET at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center in Ann Arbor.

Halperin's Take: This is smart. Romney won't back off his past statements on his Massachusetts health care law Thursday. The plan he is releasing is an updated version of the one he ran on in 2008.

Romney's rivals believe health care makes him unnominatable. Romney has failed so far in convincing the media and others that he can explain his record on this issue. By putting out a detailed plan well before any of his opponents, Romney has his best chance to move the conversation from the past to the future. Hillary Clinton tried to do the same thing on Iraq in 2008 and almost succeeded; and/but right now Romney doesn't have anyone standing in his way for the nomination who is as politically formidable as Barack Obama was four years ago.

Read more: http://thepage.time..../#ixzz1M0IH1dIQ

It's been tried so many times.

Sorry, Mitt.

Edited May 11, 2011 by Mr. Big Dog

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... his campaign provided several details on the plan yesterday.

For one, it would ensure that people with preexisting conditions aren’t refused access to coverage.

...

He would also give a tax deduction to those who buy their own health insurance.

...

The plan would also include some type of malpractice provision.

...

The plan would empower states to provide health care to their residents, so it would be up to individual states to undertake insurance reform.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/05/11/romney_set_to_offer_his_own_proposal_on_health_care/?page=2

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

For one, it would ensure that people with preexisting conditions aren’t refused access to coverage.

I can't wait to hear how this is supposed to work. Maybe the automobile and homeowners insurance industry will then understand that there's nothing wrong with extending coverage for damage that has already occured. I will then be able to drop my homeowners policy until after the next hurricane hits, drop my auto insurance until I get into an accident and drop my health care coverage until I get sick. This will save me some major moolah. Perhaps Mitt can also find a way to make it possible to purchase life insurance policies after the insured is deceased. Everyone would have the opportunity to become a millionaire w/o ever investing a dime. This is awesome!

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I can't wait to hear how this is supposed to work. Maybe the automobile and homeowners insurance industry will then understand that there's nothing wrong with extending coverage for damage that has already occured. I will then be able to drop my homeowners policy until after the next hurricane hits, drop my auto insurance until I get into an accident and drop my health care coverage until I get sick. This will save me some major moolah. Perhaps Mitt can also find a way to make it possible to purchase life insurance policies after the insured is deceased. Everyone would have the opportunity to become a millionaire w/o ever investing a dime. This is awesome!

He has proven experience in the business world. If anyone can do it, Mitt can!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

He has proven experience in the business world. If anyone can do it, Mitt can!

As I said, I can't wait to hear how Mitt will do what mankind has not only failed to do thus far but actually determined cannot be done: square the circle. Let Mitt prove all those doubters wrong. It'll be great! Everyone will be rich.

[웃 910]

Romney: As first act, out with ObamaCare

USA TODAY

5/11/2011

Health care is more than just one-sixth of the American economy. It is a source of well-being for individuals and families. We are blessed with much that is good in American health care. But we have taken a turn for the worse with ObamaCare, with its high taxes and vastly expanded federal control over our lives. I believe the better course is to empower the states to determine their own health care futures.

First, the good news: Health care in the United Stateshas made remarkable advances in our lifetimes. Dramatic improvements in medical technology have expanded both the length and quality of life. And the U.S. health care system continues to provide consumers with many choices.

We can fix these problems. Unfortunately, with the passage of ObamaCare last year, the president and the Congress took a wrong turn. ObamaCare will lead to more spending, greater federal involvement in health care and negative effects on U.S. economic activity. The president definitely forgot the admonition to "do no harm."But our health care system has several well-known problems: high and rising costs, significant numbers of Americans without insurance, and glaring gaps in quality and efficiency.

My plan is to harness the power of markets to drive positive change in health insurance and health care. And we can do so with state flexibility (unlike ObamaCare's top-down federal approach), no new taxes (as opposed to hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes under ObamaCare), and better consumer choice (as opposed to bureaucratic, government choice under ObamaCare). This change of direction offers our best hope of preserving both innovation and value.

If I am elected president, I will issue on my first day in office an executive order paving the way for waivers from ObamaCare for all 50 states. Subsequently, I will call on Congress to fully repeal ObamaCare.

The reforms that I propose, which are based on the same philosophical tenets as the reforms I offered during my last presidential campaign in 2008, return power to the states, improve access by slowing health care cost increases, and make health insurance portable and flexible for today's economy.

Step 1: Give states the responsibility, flexibility and resources to care for citizens who are poor, uninsured or chronically ill. This reform speaks to the central advantage of our federalist system — that different states will experiment with and settle on the solutions that suit their residents best. Some states might pass a plan like the one we did in Massachusetts, while others will choose an altogether different route. We can empower states to expand health care access to low-income Americans by block-granting funds for Medicaid and the uninsured. My reforms also offer the states resources to help the chronically ill — both to improve their access to care and to improve the functioning of insurance markets for others.

Step 2: Reform the tax code to promote the individual ownership of health insurance. The tax code offers open-ended subsidies for the purchase of insurance through employers. This subsidy is unfair — as it doesn't apply to insurance purchased on one's own. I propose to give individuals a choice between the current system and a tax deduction to buy insurance on their own. This simple change creates the best of both worlds. Absolutely nothing will change for those who like their current coverage. And individuals who don't get coverage through their employers will have portable, lower-cost options.

Step 3: Focus federal regulation of health care on making markets work. This means both correcting common failures in insurance markets as well as eliminating counterproductive federal rules. For example, individuals who are continuously covered for a specified period of time may not be denied access to insurance because of pre-existing conditions. And individuals should be allowed to purchase insurance across state lines, free from costly state benefit requirements. Finally, individuals and small businesses should be allowed to form purchasing pools to lower insurance costs and improve choice.

Step 4: Reform medical liability. We should cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice litigation. The federal government would also provide innovation grants to states for reforms, such as alternative dispute resolution or health care courts.

Step 5: Make health care more like a consumer market and less like a government program. This can be done by strengthening health savings accounts that help consumers save for health expenses and choose cost-effective insurance. For example, we should eliminate the minimum deductible requirement for HSAs. The market reforms I am proposing will drive down costs, better inform consumers and improve the quality of health care in our nation.

These five steps are positive change. They will reduce health care costs, improve access and enhance value for the money. My reforms put quality, choiceand innovation — not Washington — in charge.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-05-11-Romney-on-fixing-health-care_n.htm?loc=interstitialskip

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The all-but-declared Republican presidential contender, who has kept his head low for much of the year as he collected cash, raised $10.25 million in a single day Monday after bringing together his network of wealthy donors to dial for dollars in a city with no shortage of them. It's a hefty one-day total that Romney's team hopes will show his strength in the emerging GOP field.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110516/ap_on_go_ot/us_romney_campaign_money

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I think we know with reasonable certainty that standing up there on the West front of the Capitol on Jan. 20, 2013 will be one of three people: Obama, Pawlenty and Daniels.

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George Will is an anti Mormonite.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

George Will is an anti Mormonite.

That just makes him your average Republican.

[웃 910]

Mitt Romney's Health Care Advantage?

"RomneyCare" shouldn't be a liability in 2012. It should be an asset. Here's why.

By David French, May 16, 2011

Conservative pundits are in high dudgeon over Mitt Romney's May 12th health care address. Their explosions of indignation, sadly, have shown contextual ignorance and ideological incoherence. Romney has grappled with health care in greater depth than any other Republican contender and has unique and powerful insights into ObamaCare's procedural and substantive flaws. As a long-time supporter of Romney, I predict that he will not only survive this round of demagoguery, but he will prevail in the primaries and his health care experience will be a tremendous advantage in the general election.

But let's back up. In order to understand RomneyCare, ObamaCare, and the health care debate in general, one must first understand basic principles and fundamental political realities. We do not currently have a free market medical system. We already have a form of federally mandated universal health care. The 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires all hospitals receiving Medicare and certain other government funds (which is to say, almost every hospital in the nation) to provide ambulance and emergency medical care to all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Such a mandate (signed into law by Ronald Reagan) destroys any semblance of a truly free market. Imagine how radically it would distort the automobile market if you could enter a dealership and demand a car regardless of your ability to pay. Yet despite its profound market-altering effects, the universal care mandate is relatively uncontroversial. Why? Because it taps into a common moral sensibility. It is deeply offensive to a culture that preserves and protects human life to deny medical care to the sick or injured. But as you might imagine, the cost effects of this law have been significant.

Let's make this concrete. Imagine a Cambridge hipster named Brian. Brian is 27 years old, has never had a serious illness or injury, runs four miles a day, plays ultimate Frisbee on the weekends, and doesn't have health insurance. One day, as Brian rides his bike to Whole Foods, a Chevy Volt broadsides him. The electric engine was just too darn quiet. He never heard it coming.

Three days later, Brian wakes up in a hospital room and realizes that the entire apparatus of modern medicine was mobilized to save his life, from EMTs to ER physicians, to neurosurgeons, to hospitalists, to nurses who watch him night and day. He's had MRIs, CAT scans, X-rays, and three rounds of extensive surgery.

What should happen to Brian? The hospital has spent $100,000 saving his life, but he has no insurance. Should it yank out the IVs, put him out on the street, slap a lien on his assets, and commence collection proceedings? Federal law says no. Brian stays and Brian gets care—and I'm glad he does. No one wants poor Brian to die.

However, while we are morally, culturally, and legally obligated to provide a certain level of health care to our citizens, health care is extraordinarily expensive, and our country is poised on the edge of fiscal ruin. The delicate dance between these truths defines any serious health care debate, the kind of debate we should be having—and reconciling these truths within our constitutional framework is one of the central policy challenges of our time.

How did Mitt Romney handle this challenge in Massachusetts?

First, he recognized his state's unique assets and nature. Massachusetts has an extraordinary concentration of health care assets, with some of the finest hospitals and doctors in the world. But "the best" typically means "the most expensive," and for a very long time health care has cost more in Massachusetts than anywhere else.

Fortunately, Massachusetts is also a wealthy state. One of the wealthiest. It also has among the highest percentage of residents with health insurance in the country.

The (very) liberal Massachusetts legislature looked at these realities and tried to further expand coverage through a substantial, direct tax on businesses that did not already offer health care. In other words, the legislature was prepared to directly and punitively burden small business to expand health care coverage. Mitt Romney offered an alternative—the individual mandate—that would narrow the coverage gap while providing much less direct burden on the small businesses that often fuel the engine of economic growth.

The hope (the never-before-tried idea) was that the newly-insured Bay Staters would start making health care decisions more like their previously-insured neighbors. Once covered, it was thought, people like Brian would make better use of primary care physicians and place a lesser burden on costly emergency rooms.

Has it worked? Yes and no. The plan has absolutely worked to increase health insurance coverage. Massachusetts has by far the lowest rate of uninsured citizens in the country. At the same time, however, patients still go to the emergency room too often, and Massachusetts still struggles with health care costs. Yet those costs have hardly spiraled out of control. The idea (spread in some circles) that the individual mandate has bankrupted the state or led to uncontrolled cost growth is simply a "myth." The Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation has calculated the additional financial impact as roughly 1.2 percent of the state budget. The increased cost is not good, but it's hardly backbreaking.

Now, let's contrast Mitt Romney's approach with President Obama's.

First, the President took an approach (the individual mandate) that had previously been tried only in one of America's wealthiest states with a relatively low percentage of uninsured and imposed it on the entire country.

Compare this chart, showing relative state median income, with this chart, showing percentages of uninsured by state. See any differences? Arkansas is relatively poor ($37,823 median income, 48th in the country), with a high percentage of uninsured (19.2 percent in 2009). California has high income ($58,931) and a high percentage of uninsured (20 percent). Then there's Massachusetts, with high income ($64,081) and a low number of uninsured (4.4 percent). With higher percentages of uninsured come much, much higher costs in an individual mandate.

In fact, one of the prime reasons for initial cost concerns with RomneyCare was that so many people signed up for subsidized insurance so quickly that policymakers were concerned that they'd undercounted the uninsured (the numbers eventually leveled off). Start imposing the mandate on states with uninsured percentages three, four, or five times greater than Massachusetts, and costs will rise astronomically—to the point where either the budget breaks or cost controls become so draconian that the quality of care suffers and real rationing ensues.

Second, President Obama's individual mandate represents a dramatic change in the concept of federal power—a change so momentous that the Supreme Court is quite likely to strike it down. The Constitution entrusts the states with the so-called "police power," a generalized power to enact laws and regulate behavior, limited of course by state and federal constitutional constraints. The federal government, by contrast, is limited to "enumerated powers," having only those powers specifically granted by the Constitution.

Why the difference? America's founders had experienced both the centralized authority of the British Empire and the near-chaos of the Articles of Confederation. They chose a middle way that granted authority to the states but also created a federal government strong enough to defend and unify a vast and diverse country. Their wisdom echoes to this day, as the one-size-fits all approach of ObamaCare has not only been rejected by the 26 states who've filed suit against the law, but even by the Obama administration itself, which has granted, at last count, nearly 1,400 waivers from the law's requirements.

Finally, it's also critical to note that Mitt Romney turned his attention to health care only after transforming a projected $3 billion state deficit when he entered office into a $600 million surplus by 2006, the year he signed his health reform legislation. Romney fixed an economic crisis before he reformed health care. Did President Obama do this? Did he first deal with our deficit and high unemployment? Our financial reality speaks for itself.

If President Obama were Mitt Romney, he would have immediately dealt with our economic crisis, halted the explosive growth of our deficit, and then and only then reached across the aisle to design a bipartisan health care reform package.

Last week, The Onion (a satirical magazine) wrote that Mitt Romney was "haunted by past of trying to help uninsured sick people." Like any good satire, it has the bite of truth. In the strange world of American politics, Mitt Romney is "haunted" by his health care past—not so much because voters or pundits know all that much about Massachusetts, but because they hate ObamaCare so much that anything that faintly smells like it (no matter the contextual differences) is immediately and angrily rejected. Massachusetts' health care isn't perfect, as Governor Romney freely admits, but it was and is a serious and creative effort designed to address the unique needs of the state he governed.

These two sentences sum it up:

In Massachusetts, Mitt Romney balanced the budget then reached across the aisle to create a popular health reform program that was specifically designed for the unique needs of his state. Barack Obama, on the other hand, created a huge new entitlement program in an era of record deficits by ramming an unconstitutional, one-size-fits-all mandate through a reluctant congress and over the expressed objections of a majority of the American people.

Are we really going to ignore these differences? Is this really a reason, in the midst of long-term national and global economic distress, to disqualify from the Presidency the foremost economic expert in the Republican field?

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Mitt-Romneys-Health-Care-Advantage-David-French-05-17-2011?print=1

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Imagine a Cambridge hipster named Brian. Brian is 27 years old, has never had a serious illness or injury, runs four miles a day, plays ultimate Frisbee on the weekends, and doesn't have health insurance. One day, as Brian rides his bike to Whole Foods, a Chevy Volt broadsides him. The electric engine was just too darn quiet. He never heard it coming.

That is hilarious

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Barack Obama, on the other hand, created a huge new entitlement program in an era of record deficits by ramming an unconstitutional, one-size-fits-all mandate through a reluctant congress and over the expressed objections of a majority of the American people.

So few words, so much misinformation. The decision over the constitutionality of PPACA is still outstanding. Or have I missed the final ruling on this? As to the one-size-fits-all claim: false. States are quite free to pursue different paths under PPACA. VT may go single payer - something that I have a feeling no politician with any sense of self-preservation would touch with a 10 foot pole in TX, AL, MS or GA anytime soon. How's that one size fits all? And then there's this gem of the expressed objections of the majority of the American people. Looking at results of a March 2010 USA Today / Gallup poll, 49% of respondents said that it was a good thing that Congress passed the health care reform legislation, while 40% considered it a bad thing. More recent polls I've come across appear to indicate that there is less support to repeal PPACA than to keep and expand it. There's yet less support to simply defund it if it can't be repealed. That's not a majority in opposition. It was merely loud opposition.