Thanks for the cue for my new graphic ;)
Posted on 10/31/2007 3:21:01 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Mitt Romney made front-page news today -- across the pond in Britain.
"US hopeful hits at 'second-tier Britain' " said the headline on page one of The Daily Telegraph.
"In a fierce attack on Europe, the former Massachusetts governor singled out Britain's parlous health system for special mention," said the full report on page 15 in the world news section with a dateline from Nashua, N.H., described as an "elegant New England town."
Romney, like other Republicans running for president, has attacked Democrat Hillary Clinton's plan as thinly-veiled European socialized medicine. The government-run National Health Services provides care in Britain.
Romney made the remarks to employees of BAE Systems Inc., the US subsidiary of the British defense contractor, the Telegraph noted.
The print version also directs readers to the newspaper's website where they can offer an opinion as to whether Britain is "a second-tier nation."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Romney usually says the right things. His gift seems to have escaped him in this case, as the British are important allies.
It must be such a strain for him, having to try to memorize all his new positions and parrot a few one-liners for the cameras.
RomneyCARE=HillaryCARE, so he must have flip-flopped again.
No joke, he all but insitituted socialized healthcare in MA, he must love it.
Unfortunately, the NHS is a sterling example of what's wrong with socialized medicine, given especially the recent well publicized cases of a six year old girl having to raise money to get her dad medicine that he needs but NHS refuses to give him . . . and the superbugs killing literally hundreds in several hospitals because of poor sanitation and neglect of hand-washing among nurses and orderlies . . . .
Sometimes you have to learn from your friends' mistakes.
Few here would disgree with that or this:
America's health system should remain privately rather than government run, he insisted. "I do not want to go the way of England and Canada when it comes to healthcare," he said.
or this:
"Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards will take America in a sharp left turn towards Europe with big government, big taxes, Big Brother running your lives," he said.
Actually, I couldn't take issue with a thing that Romney said, and apparently neither can a lot of Brits judging by the comments they've posted. Such as these:
Britian is actually a third tier nation. It has none of the sense of service culture in the rest of Europe but all the issues of a failed socialist state. High level of alcohol consumption,broken infrastructure and third rate public institutions
I wonder how many people socialism has to kill before you realize you get what you pay for?
I feel sorry for those folk, and hope we don't end up someday feeling like they do.
Thanks for the cue for my new graphic ;)
Share with us what makes it socialized?
Romney made the remarks to employees of BAE Systems Inc.,....
&&&
What a poorly written piece. Romney’s actual quote is not even given. I suspect he referred to the UK’s health system and not the country as “second-tier”.
Well, that was helpful.
As an aside, Nashua NH makes Manchester, England look elegant.
The interesting thing is that the Daily Telegraph did not trash him for saying it. In fact, you get the impression from the article that they were trying to rub their own government’s nose in it, hoping to force some reform. The comments of the readers are even more scathing. A lot of them say that Romney was being too charitable. Some of them say he really should have called Britain “third tier.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/31/wromney131.xml
I’m not a Romney fan, but I’d be curious to know whether he criticizes British National Health Care, or just unspecified socialist national health in Europe.
I’d also be curious to know whether he called Britain a second tier nation, or whether the paper did.
No quotes by Romney are given. Such serious charges deserve to be better documented.
James Carville: "It's a feel-good story, this Romney thing. Romney is an ascendant guy."
The way this country will turn deeply socialist, is with socialized medicine. I support any politician demonizing socialized medicine.
It's for the children.
People as a crop resources.
Everybody must give a little for the greater good....forever.
You dont’ get off that easy you have to show in the Bill what makes it socialized?
No hit and run gifts wtih out substance Diogenesis!
In addition to making health insurance mandatory (taking away tax deductions for those who don’t buy insurance), the legislation Gov. Romney signed expanded the state’s Medicaid rolls, levies a $295 per-employee “fee” on businesses that don’t offer health insurance, and sets up a government board to approve new health plans.
Almost immediately after the bill creating it was signed into law, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed, which claimed that, under RomneyCare, “the state is forcing people to buy insurance many will need subsidies to afford, which is a recipe for higher taxes and more government intervention down the road.”
RomneyCare is not even been fully implemented yet, and a cost overrun of $151 million in 2007 alone is already in the cards, perhaps because the RomneyCare financial model assumed the wrong number of uninsured in Massachusetts (the Census Bureau puts it at 748,000, but RomneyCare assumes only 500,000). But any needed hike in taxes won’t be pushed through by Romney—he’ll be out of office when the bill comes due, and when extra federal dollars will likely have to be allocated to Massachusetts to help cover the shortfall between RomneyCare’s cost and its budget.
And RomneyCare is reliant on federal funds. So imagine if, as Romney hopes, it is replicated in other states. Even if we do not have federally-mandated universal healthcare a la HillaryCare, we could easily end up with that option’s badly behaved little brother—”state-specific” universal healthcare, funded in large part, and at greater than current levels, by the federal government.
That matters because it means more government intrusion into personal healthcare choices. Government will end up funding healthcare at a higher level, and in exchange, making mandates about the kind of coverage you must have, and who may treat you (RomneyCare mandates that individuals must purchase HMO coverage; PPO coverage, often better and more flexible, is not allowed). Moreover, government will end up dictating to businesses and requiring them to incur potentially great costs: RomneyCare mandates that employers with more than 10 workers must assume ultimate financial responsibility if employees or their immediate family members need expensive medical care, and that if such businesses do not insure their employees, they must pay a $295 per uninsured employee fee to subsidize healthcare costs. This threatens employment levels and discourages small businesses from growing.
Ultimately, the entire specter of government engagement in the realm of healthcare hits at a fundamental question. Is healthcare and health itself primarily an individual responsibility, the product of individual choices made in consideration of private matters, or is it a benefit to be assured by the government, without regard to the wishes of the individual?
Only an individual can know what their objectives are in terms of health and how best to ensure that they are met. For example, someone with a rare and difficult-to-treat illness may wish to carry PPO insurance, rather than HMO insurance. PPO insurance generally affords access to a wider range of physicians and treatments, yet RomneyCare bans taking it out. Alternatively, someone earning $30,000 a year—too much to be eligible for state-subsidized insurance under RomneyCare—might want to buy cheap, basic coverage, instead of insurance costing around $3,600 annually for an individual and $11,000 annually for a family, plus 10%-14% annual inflation on premiums. But buying cheaper, more basic insurance is not possible—RomneyCare didn’t change Massachusetts’ rules mandating coverage for chiropractic treatment and acupuncture, or allowing purchase on the day of diagnosis, which make insurance there so expensive, compared to less regulated states.
This is the big problem with RomneyCare. It represents an interventionist, big government approach toward what is a highly personal matter, and does virtually nothing to reform burdensome insurance regulation that is responsible for the problem of underinsurance.
Romney disagrees with this characterization. Romney claims that nothing wrong with forcing people via government diktat to purchase health insurance, because states already force people to carry car insurance. But he ignores that it is not standard to require drivers to carry insurance for damage to themselves or their own cars—only for harm done to others. This may be stupid, but so is driving a Yugo, and yet we don’t mandate that everyone drive a BMW, do we?
Romney also contends that, since hospitals are required to provide treatment for the uninsured irrespective of their ability to pay, underinsurance is a grave risk and government already is in the position of footing the bill for something that should be a matter of individual responsibility.
Yet, as the Wall Street Journal’s “RomneyCare” op-ed notes, the cost of covering the care of uninsured patients is low, and uses a very small proportion of governmental medical budgets. Plus, the uninsured that benefit from emergency-room treatment can always be pursued as debtors, just like people who default on loans.
It is a shame that Romney could identify no more market-friendly options to curb the problem of under-insurance. Surely, in a state where insurance must cover rather exotic treatments, un-mandating coverage for chiropractic treatment and acupuncture as well as in vitro fertilization, could and should have been pursued first. This would have enabled cheaper policies to be marketed in Massachusetts, the number of uninsured to be cut, and for Romney to have legitimately claimed responsibility for meaningful, market-friendly reforms in the realm of healthcare—something RomneyCare effectively prevents.
And finally, Romney himself has effectively admitted RomneyCare was a disaster, and in ANOTHER flip-flop, abandoned it with another proposal:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/08/24/romney-abandons-romneycare/
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