Posted on 02/01/2012 4:41:10 PM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
If only the Democrats had decided to socialize the food industry or housing, Romneycare would probably still be viewed as a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles -- as it was at the time.
It's not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In 2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4 percent of all health care expenditures in the country.
Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance was considered the free-market alternative to the Democrats' piecemeal socialization of the entire medical industry.
In November 2004, for example, libertarian Ronald Bailey praised mandated private health insurance in Reason magazine, saying that it "could preserve and extend the advantages of a free market with a minimal amount of coercion."
A leading conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, helped design Romneycare, and its health care analyst, Bob Moffit, flew to Boston for the bill signing.
Romneycare was also supported by Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and health policy analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute. Herzlinger praised Romneycare for making consumers, not business or government, the primary purchasers of health care.
The bill passed by 154-2 in the Massachusetts House and unanimously, 37-0, in the Massachusetts Senate -- including the vote of Sen. Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy's seat in the U.S. Senate in January 2010 by pledging to be the "41st vote against Obamacare."
But because both Obamacare and Romneycare concern the same general topic area -- health care -- and can be nicknamed (politician's name plus "care"), Romney's health care bill is suddenly perceived as virtually the same thing as the widely detested Obamacare. (How about "Romneycare-gate"?)
As The New York Times put it, "Mr. Romney's bellicose opposition to 'Obamacare' is an almost comical contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there." This is like saying state school-choice plans are "the same idea" as the Department of Education.
One difference between the health care bills is that Romneycare is constitutional and Obamacare is not. True, Obamacare's unconstitutional provisions are the least of its horrors, but the Constitution still matters to some Americans. (Oh, to be there when someone at the Times discovers this document called "the Constitution"!)
As Rick Santorum has pointed out, states can enact all sorts of laws -- including laws banning contraception -- without violating the Constitution. That document places strict limits on what Congress can do, not what the states can do. Romney, incidentally, has always said his plan would be a bad idea nationally.
The only reason the "individual mandate" has become a malediction is because the legal argument against Obamacare is that Congress has no constitutional authority to force citizens to buy a particular product.
The legal briefs opposing Obamacare argue that someone sitting at home, minding his own business, is not engaged in "commerce ... among the several states," and, therefore, Congress has no authority under the Commerce Clause to force people to buy insurance.
No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.
States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.
There's no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves with guns and a state forcing adults in today's world to equip themselves with health insurance.
The hyperventilating over government-mandated health insurance confuses a legal argument with a policy objection.
If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional, but it wouldn't be the godawful train wreck that it is. It wouldn't even be the godawful train wreck that high-speed rail is.
It would not be a 2,000-page, trillion-dollar federal program micromanaging every aspect of health care in America with enormous, unresponsive federal bureaucracies manned by no-show public-sector union members enforcing a mountain of regulations that will bankrupt the country and destroy medical care, as liberals scratch their heads and wonder why Obamacare is costing 20 times more than they expected and doctors are leaving the profession in droves for more lucrative careers, such as video store clerk.
Nothing good has ever come of a 2,000-page bill.
There's not much governors can do about the collectivist mess Congress has made of health care in this country. They are mere functionaries in the federal government's health care Leviathan.
A governor can't repeal or expand the federal tax break given to companies that pay their employees' health insurance premiums -- a tax break denied the self-employed and self-insured.
A governor can't order the IRS to start recognizing tax deductions for individual health savings accounts.
A governor can't repeal the 1946 federal law essentially requiring hospitals to provide free medical services to all comers, thus dumping a free-rider problem on the states.
It was precisely this free-rider problem that Romneycare was designed to address in the only way a governor can. In addition to mandating that everyone purchase health insurance, Romneycare used the $1.2 billion that the state was already spending on medical care for the uninsured to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance for those who couldn't afford it.
What went wrong with Romneycare wasn't a problem in the bill, but a problem in Massachusetts: Democrats.
First, the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature set the threshold for receiving a subsidy so that it included people making just below the median income in the United States, a policy known as "redistribution of income." For more on this policy, see "Marx, Karl."
Then, liberals destroyed the group-rate, "no frills" private insurance plans allowed under Romneycare (i.e. the only kind of health insurance a normal person would want to buy, but which is banned in most states) by adding dozens of state mandates, including requiring insurers to cover chiropractors and in vitro fertilization -- a policy known as "pandering to lobbyists."
For more on "pandering" and "lobbyists," see "Gingrich, Newt." (Yes, that's an actual person's name.)
Romney's critics, such as Rick Santorum, charge that the governor should have known that Democrats would wreck whatever reforms he attempted.
They have, but no more than they would have wrecked health care in Massachusetts without Romneycare. Democrats could use a sunny day as an excuse to destroy the free market, redistribute income and pander to lobbyists. Does that mean Republicans should never try to reform anything and start denouncing sunny days?
Santorum has boasted of his role in passing welfare reform in the 1990s. You know what the Democrats' 2009 stimulus bill dismantled? That's right: the welfare reform that passed in the 1990s.
The problem isn't health insurance mandates. The problem isn't Romneycare. The problem isn't welfare reform. The problem is Democrats.
She is an entertainer but she had great one liners and wit at times. She was fun to listen to—until now.
I would not really mind her switch—really-—but she had some influence and the damage that will be done if Romney runs at such a critical time in this country will be devastating to this nation-—if not totally destroying it-—he will lose and if he doesn’t—he will continue on the zero road to destruction. It is so disheartening to know the Marxist have control of both parties at the top.
I can’t have any compassion for her in such a critical period in American history.
rock em sock em robots... by marx
Ann seems under the influence of either LSD or LDS.
Coulter has lost Free Republic as supporters. Surely, she doesn’t think the Elders are going to replace us?
“The first hour of Mark Levin is done to educate Ann Coulter tonight on her cheering of Romneycare. Don’t miss it!”
bttt
“...Note that governments do not have “rights.” Rather, they have only powers.
This obviously goes for states as well, which is why it is absurd to argue for “states rights” in order to bypass the Constitution and restrict human rights.
Which is why the Confederate assouls who used “states-rights” as a pretext to restrict and deny the rights of human beings were anything but conservative. For only a leftist could believe that the state has a supernatural right to strip man of his natural rights.....”
Here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2841340/posts?page=35#35
As much as it pains me to say this I think we were gamed by some of these people, they said what we wanted to hear so we would buy their books and tune into to them for ratings. It hurts me as bad as it would hurt catching a dear friend talking mean behind my back. I feel very betrayed by the GOP-e, FOX, Drudge,.............. the list goes on.
And another point: Ever since she began worshipping at the altar of Mittens she would say in her column off and on: "It doesn't matter what (candidates name here) says or does because Romney WILL be the nominee"...Why was she so sure? Because she knew he was doing a Mike Bloomberg, throwing tons of money at anything that stood in his way including paying off a certain blonde columnist so he could appear more conservative.
Various things come along sort of as a nebulous idea and people think they're reasonable until the full effects start to get reasoned through. The first time I heard Newt mention anything about mandates was as a counterpoint to Hillarycare to illustrate how if anything had to be done it didn't have to be done at the Federal level like Hillarycare. So, at least at that point in time he didn't see it as anything like RomneyCare, OmbamaCare, or anything else that dictated what services were available to who.
Regards
I only commented on the individual mandate, not on any other parallels to Obamacare, if there are any. It seems to me that what most people focus on, with hating Obamacare/Romneycare, is that we are forced to participate or pay a fine. Newt’s idea isn’t really any different, and yet he is lauded as this wonderful conservative. But there’s nothing conservative about forcing people to purchase any kind of product. The three ideas are essentially the same.
Some of the videos I’ve found of him, and perhaps the Beck interview but I don’t remember that one specifically, he is talking about wealthier people being forced to participate because some of them are opting to not buy insurance and then will skip out on their hospital bills. While I agree that, if that is indeed happening, it’s not right for the people to do, I have to wonder how that cost compares to all the illegals making use of the hospital ERs because they know they won’t have to pay anything. I suspect that that total amount is much higher than the instance Newt was talking about.
I’ve never come across him saying that the individual mandate he was talking about being at the state level, or that it was only for low income or those freshly entering the work force. Even if he had, it’s still an individual mandate and unconstitutional. I don’t see how what he’s said, as recently as 2 months ago, can be explained away. And certainly it casts much doubt on his supposed conservatism.
Indeed! If Romney is the GOP nominee, he gets my vote. Obama must go, and I would vote for a syphilitic camel over him. Romney is a heckuva lot better than a syphilitic camel!
As for all you Ann attackers, no one is forcing you to read her opinion nor comment on the thread.
Flame away!
This obviously goes for states as well, which is why it is absurd to argue for “states rights” in order to bypass the Constitution and restrict human rights.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Cordially,
Bend Over!
You’re welcome! :) bttt
Ann. We've been over this a thousand times already at FR. The Mitbots formerly here screamed this over and over, that Willard's plan was great until the evil Libs supposed 'wrecking' of it. BUT your boy still loved it ... well after the Liberal 'wrecking' .... and commissioned a $30,000 portrait to highlight Romneycare ... AS HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT!
Romney Gives Mass. Health Reform an 'A' (in July, 2009)
Wait. There's more! In 2012, I'm gonna get Ann Coulter to support this piece of sh*t!
If your argument is that such a pool is unconstitutional, then I'd agree. I'm just pointing out that I have never heard Newt advocate the sort of thing Hillary, Romney, and Obama, have advocated and put in place. Everything I've ever heard Newt talking about was an alternative to a big system so I'm sure there are more than a few things he's mentioned as possible alternatives.
Mark Levin’s rebuttal of Ann Coulter’s “Three Cheers for RomneyCare” article
The Right Scoop ^ | 2/01/2012 | The Right Scoop
Posted on February 2, 2012 11:00:24 AM AST by Sudetenland
Ann Coulter wrote an article today called “Three Cheers for RomneyCare” where she defended Mitt Romney and RomneyCare. Mark Levin decided to read her article, fresh off the presses, on the air and go through it line by line, “reeducating” her on why RomneyCare is not only wrong, but a big problem for Mitt Romney and all of Massachusetts.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2841503/posts
Coulter, go $#%$ &%*%#$%#
No flames here, because I do respect loyalty. Still, is it wrong for FReepers to disagree with Ann?
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