Mitt Romney: Instead of ObamaCare, I Would Require States Get Everyone Insured

The New American ^ | 05 November 2013 | Michael Tennant

[VitacoreVision]

Mitt Romney told NBC News that if he'd been elected president, he would have replaced ObamaCare with a mandate that states guarantee that all their residents are insured.

Mitt Romney: Instead of ObamaCare, I Would Require States Get Everyone Insured

The New American
05 November 2013


It’s official: If former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney had been elected president in 2012, ObamaCare would still be with us, albeit in slightly modified form. Last year’s Republican presidential nominee told NBC’s David Gregory that as president, he too would have demanded that all Americans have health insurance; but unlike President Barack Obama, he would have ordered the states, rather than the federal government, to figure out how to make that happen.

Gregory began the November 3 edition of Meet the Press with a clip from a recent speech in which Obama praised Romney for doing “the right thing on healthcare” when he signed the 2006 legislation mandating that all Bay Staters have insurance. That law, of course, became the prototype for ObamaCare. In crafting the federal law, the Obama administration even consulted some of Romney’s former advisors.

Gregory then asked Romney why he “reject[ed]” Obama’s “compliment” — a good question considering that while he was still running for president and ObamaCare hadn’t begun visibly imploding, Romney said he took it as a “compliment” that Obama had called him “the grandfather of ObamaCare.” Today, with Healthcare.gov barely functioning, insurance rates skyrocketing, and insurance policies being canceled left and right, Romney wants nothing to do with his “grandchild.”

“I think the president failed to learn the lessons that came from the experience of Massachusetts,” Romney said. “First of all, the Massachusetts experience was a state-run plan. The right way to deal with health care reform is not to have a one-size-fits-all plan that’s imposed on all the states, but recognizing the differences between different states’ populations, states should be able to craft their own plans to get all their citizens insured, and to make sure that preexisting conditions are covered.”

Romney also pointed out that Massachusetts “phased in the requirements” of its healthcare law over time to prevent major problems like the ones ObamaCare is experiencing, and he chastised Obama for telling Americans that they could keep their health insurance if they liked it. “I think that fundamental dishonesty has really put in peril the whole foundation of his second term,” he asserted.

Clearly, the fact that Obama was not forthright about his healthcare plan’s effects on people’s existing insurance policies was the main talking point Romney wanted to get across in this appearance. He kept returning to it every time Gregory tried to point out the similarities between Romneycare and ObamaCare.

Romney admitted that his healthcare law had cost many Bay State residents their insurance and suggested that Obama had to have known the same thing would happen under ObamaCare but kept it from the public — as indeed he did. He also confessed that “health insurance is more expensive in Massachusetts than anywhere else in the country” and attributed that, at least in part, to Romneycare — something he was loath to do prior to last November. “And you’re going to see, as a result of ObamaCare, premiums going up dramatically across the country,” he added. That, too, is already occurring.

Despite all these negatives — not to mention the fact that Romneycare has caused such high healthcare costs in Massachusetts that the state has imposed price controls on healthcare — Romney still stands by his law as the right plan for Massachusetts, and possibly for the rest of the country. For all his paeans to federalism, Romney has long said the Massachusetts law should be a “model for the nation.”

In 2007, as Gregory reminded him by playing the tape of his appearance, Romney said, “I think you’re going to find, when it’s all said and done, after all these states that are laboratories of democracy get their chance to try their own plans, that those who follow the path that we pursued will find it’s the best path, and we’ll end up with a nation that’s taken a mandate approach.”

“You don’t believe all the states should have adopted this, but you do believe that the entire nation should take a mandate approach,” Gregory said. “If it was good for Massachusetts, what’s so wrong with taking it national?”

The obvious answer, that a federal plan similar to Massachusetts’ is unconstitutional, did not escape Romney’s lips, but he did again say that “each state should be able ... to put in place the plan that works best for them.”

This at least sounds like a man who understands that the federal government has no business dictating healthcare policy to the states. Based on his answer to a subsequent question, however, that is clearly not the case.

“What would you have done?” Gregory asked. “Had you become president — in my interview with you in the course of the campaign you said there were aspects of ObamaCare that you would want to keep, preexisting conditions, et cetera. What would you have done?”

“Well, I’m not president so I can’t be so clear minded as to tell you what I would have done,” Romney replied. “But my own plan was to say to each state, ‘You’ve got a requirement to move to a point where all your people are insured, and where you cover preexisting conditions. We’re going to give you flexibility from the federal government level to help you be able to do so.’”

In other words, a President Romney would have sought to replace ObamaCare with ObamaCare Lite: a law enshrining the same faulty premises and mandates as ObamaCare with a thin veneer of federalism. This, of course, is no more constitutional than ObamaCare, and its effects would be roughly the same. After all, as Romney pointed out, ObamaCare’s failings are the same as those of Romneycare; and by requiring states to enact some variant of Romneycare, he would have ensured that those failings were replicated in each state just as surely as Obama has.

Anyone voting for Romney last year in hopes of ridding the country of ObamaCare got snookered.

[Fledermaus]

That’s true. No one was banned. I find it more interesting that once a lame nominee wins everyone’s knees buckle and actually believe they’d be better than the D, no matter what.

Romney, in this interview, PROVED he was NO DIFFERENT!!

Reminds me of the FReepers that demanded we say nothing bad about GW Bush in 2005-2007 when it was clear he was shifting back left and, in fact, lied about being a conservative. How? War and tax rate cuts?

He learned the mistakes of his dad but once reelected went back to the Bush ways of sticking to conservatives.

[ansel12]

To me, Romney was far worse than a rino, it’s too late for me to get into it tonight, but Romney was an actual enemy of not only conservatives, but largely of America, and the GOP.

Romney’s history is a much larger tale than just the normal Bob Dole, H.W.Bush, McCain, republican rino type.

For just a hint of what the 66 year old man is who was avoiding the draft as his father was running for president during war time, Mitt actually left the GOP because of Reagan, has campaigned on not voting for Reagan, and became a democrat supporter, fund raiser, and voter, not becoming republican again until October of 1993, the political history of his mother and father is pretty radical in similar direction. Romney had a personal agenda for conservative America/republicans that had ridiculed and humiliated his parents, that we wouldn’t like.

[Fledermaus]

Yep.

And his “saving” the Olympics in Utah, as we found out, was because he told everyone to find any federal government grant they could get for any reason.

[ToastedHead]

“They fooled me twice.

I’ll sit it out.

call me what you will. IDK. I can’t do it any more.”

Half of my brain would like to have a seat next you. Another half thinks a loser R is better than a loser D. The third half is only staying involved in politics for the humor.

[TomasUSMC]

What we need is a ONE POLITICAL PARTY government. Then we all become democrats and we all vote democratic. Then we start to destroy it from the inside. INfiltrate it and destroy it.

Cause this whole republican thing has gotten so old and lame it ain’t funny.

Yeah no, I used to think third party....nope not anymore....I going for one party then crawl inside it and explode it like a grenade.

jusayin

[kelly4c]

Weird coincidence that both of the presidential nominees in our last election had this unconstitutional mindset of foisting forced health insurance on the masses. Strange times indeed.

[C210N]

I going for one party then crawl...

I know this republic is done when I go into "getting kids to go into the Party as high members" mode to ease the pain.

[kelly4c]

“These jerks have lost the true meaning that the federal government receives its legitimacy from the states - not the other way around.”

This is the crux of the matter and it looks as if it will take no less than another Revolution in order to re-institute this basis of our Republic.

[mdmathis6]

A lot of Mitt in the news...I wonder if he’s planning to run again, or at least position himself as some type of power broker.

[TADSLOS]

How on earth did Mitt Romney get the GOP nomination?

Ask McCain and the Bushes. They can explain it to you.

[Diogenesis]

The FATHER of ObamaCARE/RomneyCARE and gay marriage
speaks his liberal twit, and the treasonous MSM
AGAIN calls the carpetbagging rat a “conservative”.

[hadaclueonce]

My Dog told said DO NOT vote for Mitt.

[Jabba the Nutt]

A day before Romney came out with these comments, I asked on another thread: 'would a Romney administration have been worse than Obama?'

It's a close call. With Romney we wouldn't have Republican opposition to expanding the welfare state just like under Dubya. And Romney is absolutely clueless about our Constitution. The Federal Government's President cannot order States to insure everyone. Talk about power grabs.

Romney foreign policy would not be anti-American like the Indonesian kid with have in their now.

[dfwgator]

How on earth did Mitt Romney get the GOP nomination?

He was the guy the Democrats wanted to get it.

[cableguymn]

I just don’t know what to do. I am fairly sure the tipping point has been reached and the rats have bought enough voters to win whatever they want.

Some will point at christy and say “see a republican can win!” ya, so? he’s still far to liberal to do any good.

I see very little hope in the outcome last night.

The MSM is crowing about Detroit electing a white guy. Who cares? is he still a liberal? The problem will remain in Detroit.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Just shut up Mitt. In fact STFU!