Despite the widely acknowledged similarities between Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2006 health care “experiment” and President Obama’s proposed reforms, Romney wants to make it perfectly clear that the two plans are utterly and totally different. Got it? NOT THE SAME.
Equating the two is like comparing apples to oranges, dogs to cats, horses to, uh, donkeys. Wait, those two things are kind of similar. Oops!
On Fox News Sunday, Romney told host Chris Wallace that the difference between his plan and Obama’s is like:
. . . the difference between a racehorse and a donkey, if you will, so — they both have four legs, but one works pretty well and the other’s not working and would not work at all.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that this analogy is totally bass-ackwards (so to speak) — since, last time I checked, donkeys are far better suited to working than their speedy, spindly-legged cousins — the two things being compared are really not all that dissimilar. Kind of like Romneycare and Obamacare. Huh, imagine that.
But according to Romney, the two plans are really (he swears) totally different because one is a state plan, and the other is federal. As Romney explained to Wallace:
A big difference — a state plan versus a federal plan. No new taxes, unlike his plan. No cut in Medicare, unlike his plan. And no controls over insurance premiums, price controls, cost controls like his plan. So very, very different in that regard.
Let me explain a little something about our government here, Mittens. Governors work at the state level, and presidents at the federal level. So yeah, that would be one big difference between the two plans. A ridiculously obvious one, but a difference nevertheless.
Of course, Obama could just leave it up to the states to handle their own business (after all, as Romney points out in the interview, “this is a federalist nation”). And he could also make them finance their own health care reforms instead of giving them access to federal funds. But that might, you know, make it harder for governors to claim that they single-handedly “fixed” heath care without having to raise taxes or cut Medicare.
Again, from Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: The libertarian, and certainly the somewhat conservative, Cato Institute says that your plan in Massachusetts is a mirror — a mirror plan of “Obama- care.” They say it’s quite right you didn’t raise taxes, but they say, in fact, you got millions of dollars from the federal government to finance your plan.
ROMNEY: Well, what we have is a plan which is paid for half by the state and half by the federal government. The cost is about 1.5 percent of the state budget.
And the federal dollars we received were federal dollars that we were entitled to through a program called DISH, the disproportionate share program. Federal funds had been applied to Massachusetts, just like to other states, for the care of those that were uninsured.
We said, “Let’s take that money that’s been going to hospitals that are caring for the uninsured and instead help people buy their own private insurance.” No government insurance. No government option, if you will.
WALLACE: Well, there’s no…
ROMNEY: Private health insurance.
WALLACE: … government option in the Obama plan anymore, either.
ROMNEY: No, that’s right. That’s right. And so what we did was entirely different than what President Obama is proposing on the bases that I’m taking you through.
So, let me get this straight. Aside from the individual and employer mandates, the subsidies for people who can’t afford to buy insurance, and the minimum standards for coverage, Romney’s plan was completely different from Obama’s because
- it didn’t involve new taxes (thanks to millions of federal dollars), and
- it didn’t put any limits or price controls on insurance premiums (which would explain why, according to the Wall Street Journal, average Massachusetts health care premiums are now the highest in the nation).
Yeeah. Is it just me, or would those also qualify, in retrospect, as two ways Romney’s reform failed?
While the Massachusetts plan has succeeded in insuring nearly everyone in the state, health care now costs more than it did pre-reform — in fact, the amount the state spent on health care has increased 42% since 2006. And, as I mentioned before, thanks to a lack of insurance price controls, it now costs more to be insured in Massachusetts than in any other state in the union. Are these really things to brag about?
Now, I understand why it would be a good move for Romney to distance himself from the wildly unpopular and equally flawed reform bill the Prez keeps trying to cram down Congress’s (and the American public’s) throat — especially if he’s going to make a bid for the presidency in 2012. So I get it.
But claiming that the two plans have absolutely nothing in common? Sorry, Mitt, but that horse (or was that donkey?) won’t run.
Related posts:
- Let’s Call It Mitt-Vision™ In the same sense, I can “see” Mitt Romney being...
- Melissa Etheridge Has Good News for Opponents of Obama’s Tax Plan You can just ignore it if the government doesn’t give...
- Kirstie Alley’s Weight-Loss Plan Is Going Really Well Remember when Kirstie Alley got fired from Jenny Craig for...
Aren’t there more pressing issues these morons should be dealing with? Two wars, Guantanamo, the economy, etc., etc. Oh right. All that other stuff is important when it’s someone else in charge. I would think this whole health care sham would be kinda low on the list.
“I’m putting my health care reforms on the back burner for now. While it’s still important to do something, I want to handle the other more immediate problems first, because health care isn’t nearly as important when you’re jobless, and homeless.”
See how easy that is? Anyone in charge reading this can make the $100,000 check for my consulting fee out to “cash.” See you in the Bahamas suckers.
Dear Sarah – although I’ll agree with you that Romney’s argument is idiotic, you really need to learn some basic economics and the difference between cost and price. Having politicians artificially set the price of insurance premiums would do nothing to control the actual costs of health care which have skyrocketed in Massachusetts because of even more government intervantion in the first place.
Part of the problem is that they badly – BADLY – underestimated how many people would sign up for the “free” state-provided care. Somehow they thought that if something was offered “free” that folks who didn’t need it wouldn’t sign up for it. OOPS.
The Massachusetts experience is just another reason why the federal government should keep out of medical care. The government can pass legislation that will help lower costs without forcing everyone to buy insurance or handing out more money to those in “need”
What D said.