BREAKING: Mitt Romney Urged Obama to Embrace the Individual Mandate

[Mr. Shaman]

THIS JUST IN: Mitt Romney is a liberal flip-flop.

Hmmmmmmmm.....ya' think he was surprised when his wife "reported that" to him??

 

[Quantum Windbag]

BREAKING: Mitt Romney Urged Obama to Embrace the Individual Mandate
Red State ^ | March 2, 2012 | Erick Erickson

BREAKING: Mitt Romney Urged Obama to Embrace the Individual Mandate | RedState
Had Michigan not been as close, the Democrats would have waited to spring this on us in the general election. Luckily we have it now and I hope Ohio voters are paying attention.

In July 2009, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in USA Today urging Barack Obama to usean individual mandate at the national level to control healthcare costs.

On the campaign trail now, Mitt Romney says the individual mandate is appropriate for Massachusetts, but not the nation. Repeatedly in debates, Romney has said he opposes a national individual mandate.

But back in 2009, as Barack Obama was formulating his healthcare vision for the country, Mitt Romney encouraged him publicly to use an individual mandate. In his op-ed, Governor Romney suggested that the federal government learn from Massachusetts how to make healthcare available for all.


(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...



The op-ed no longer appears on the USA Today website but is archived on the Mitt Romney fan site "Mitt Romney Central" and is accessible on the former Governor's old website via the web archive.


Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

Romney continues further down in the op-ed bringing up the individual mandate dreaded by conservatives.


Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.


Mitt Romney's Advice For ObamaCare: Look At RomneyCare

does anyone on the left know how to read? Can you show me the part of ObamaCare that uses tax penalties to encourage individuals to buy insurance?

How about where Obama actually took some time to go over all the alternatives and think them through, and not cram some mixed up bag of crap that was so bad that the parts that were specifically designed to buy off states were rejected by those states?

Didn't think so.

They don't call it a tax penalty. They call it a fine. But money out of your pocket is money out of your pocket no matter what they label it.

Most people will never notice the mandate, as they get insurance through their employer and that's good enough for the government. But of those who aren't exempt and aren't insured, the choice will be this: Purchase insurance or pay a small fine. In 2016, the first year the fine is fully in place, it will be $695 a year or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher. That makes the mandate progressive.

The irony of the mandate is that it's been presented as a terribly onerous tax on decent, hardworking people who don't want to purchase insurance. In reality, it's the best deal in the bill: A cynical consumer would be smart to pay the modest penalty rather than pay thousands of dollars a year for insurance. In the current system, that's a bad idea because insurers won't let them buy insurance if they get sick later. In the reformed system, there's no consequence for that behavior. You could pay the penalty for five years and then buy insurance the day you felt a lump.

Luckily, consumers aren't usually that cynical, and the experience of places such as Massachusetts suggests that individual mandates encourage people to buy insurance even when it might make sense for people to simply pay the penalty. But for all the furor over the individual mandate, the danger in the bill is much more that it is too weak and too good a deal than that it is too strong and too punitive a tax.

Ezra Klein - How does the individual mandate work?

The reality is...without the mandate, the affordable care act will bankrupt private health insurance companies, forcing the government to step in and provide government run health insurance. If the right wants to stop it, SCOTUS will have to strike down the whole thing. If they only strike down the mandate, socialized medicine is an inevitability.

Ezra Klein? isn't he the guy that thinks that spending money twice is possible?

News flash, I don't give a fuck if, without the mandate, the law will bankrupt insurance companies. I could care less about the problems the insurance companies got themselves into when they sold out to the politicians in exchange for supporting ObamaCare, they made their bed, they can lie in it. Once they go bankrupt people will be forced to buy healthcare directly, and prices will drop as people look for less expensive options.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I read the OP and I didn't see where Romney was supposed to have called for a national mandate.

Not you too?

The entire op-ed is Mittney outlining how what worked in Massechusetts can work for the nation. He's telling Obama to do what he did. Only because the federal government has more power, Mittney is saying that the Feds can actually "slow or stop medical inflation"

There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

Yes and he pointed to other things like tax credits. He never advocated a national federal mandate. I challenge you to show me where he did that. You can't just make shiz up to suit your political whims.

Sure he can.

The problem is he can't get honest people to go along with him, which explains why none of the respectable news organizations are trying to sell it.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

 

[dblack]

... I don't give a fuck if, without the mandate, the law will bankrupt insurance companies. I could care less about the problems the insurance companies got themselves into when they sold out to the politicians in exchange for supporting ObamaCare, they made their bed, they can lie in it. Once they go bankrupt people will be forced to buy healthcare directly, and prices will drop as people look for less expensive options.

Exactly. Insurance has made our delusional expectations regarding health care seem 'viable' when they're not. The reality is that we need cheap health care - not everyone can afford the best and shouldn't be forced to do without if they can't. And that's what our misguided attempts at regulating quality do. Letting the status-quo of group insurance crash and burn will bring this home and make deregulation inevitable, not socialized medicine. If nothing else, this will happen by default as people turn to underground doctors and drug suppliers in lieu of the overpriced, state-approved providers.

 

[dblack]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

He promised?!?..

Oh, well, I didn't realize ...

 

[JoeB131]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

I'm sure Romney is not going to be the one to tell people with sick kids, "Hey, the insurance companies should totally be able to refuse to treat your child for a pre-existing condition."

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

He promised?!?..

Oh, well, I didn't realize ...

He's said it in no uncertain terms; and that he'd grant waivers to everyone on day one.

What are you trying to get at here? That Romney is for Obama policies? If you believed that for one second, you'd be thrilled. You'd get eight more years instead of four. You guys know that you're lying about the healthcare reality. And if you want to talk about broken promises, Obama has plenty of them.

 

[Mac1958]

.

I think this is all one big misunderstanding. We're not being fair to Romney.

See, when he says "I'm for something", he means "I'll get rid of it if I become President."

Come on. Give him a break.

.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

I'm sure Romney is not going to be the one to tell people with sick kids, "Hey, the insurance companies should totally be able to refuse to treat your child for a pre-existing condition."

Pre-existing conditions is a rouse. We could have passed that without passing the rest of the Obamacare nonsense. Frankly, I'm insulted that Obama used other people's serious problems as a prop to pass all types of nonsense.

 

[dblack]

He's said it in no uncertain terms; and that he'd grant waivers to everyone on day one.

What are you trying to get at here? That Romney is for Obama policies? If you believed that for one second, you'd be thrilled. You'd get eight more years instead of four.

That's exactly what I'm worried about. Romney will push for the same shit as Obama with different trappings - and he'll get little to no push back from Congress. I'd rather see Obama flounder against a strong Republican opposition.

 

[Immanuel]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

Not a difficult promise to make when you know that as President, you can't do a thing about it. Getting rid of ACA is up to the Supreme Court and failing that up to Congress.

Romney is only telling everyone what they want to hear. Come January 2013, he'll find a reason to flip flop back.

Immie

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

He's said it in no uncertain terms; and that he'd grant waivers to everyone on day one.

What are you trying to get at here? That Romney is for Obama policies? If you believed that for one second, you'd be thrilled. You'd get eight more years instead of four.

That's exactly what I'm worried about. Romney will push for the same shit as Obama with different trappings - and he'll get little to no push back from Congress. I'd rather see Obama flounder against a strong Republican opposition.

Obama is dangerous and undeserving. If a president fails in his first term, you don't give him a second term.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

Not a difficult promise to make when you know that as President, you can't do a thing about it. Getting rid of ACA is up to the Supreme Court and failing that up to Congress.

Romney is only telling everyone what they want to hear. Come January 2013, he'll find a reason to flip flop back.

Immie

No he won't. Romney has been quite clear about how Obamacare is unconstitutional and unaffordable. This flip-flop talk is leftist propaganda at its best.

 

[Vidi]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

Not a difficult promise to make when you know that as President, you can't do a thing about it. Getting rid of ACA is up to the Supreme Court and failing that up to Congress.

Romney is only telling everyone what they want to hear. Come January 2013, he'll find a reason to flip flop back.

Immie

No he won't. Romney has been quite clear about how Obamacare is unconstitutional and unaffordable. This flip-flop talk is leftist propaganda at its best.

Cmon Gatsby. Youre smarter than that.

Here let Mittney tell you himself.



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9njHHyRI7g&feature=player_embedded]MittvMitt.com: The story of two men trapped in one body - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Greenbeard]

He's said it in no uncertain terms; and that he'd grant waivers to everyone on day one.

I hate to break it to you, but he can't actually do that. The conditions for the waivers he's referring to are specified in the statute and they don't allow for for blanket exemptions from the ACA.

§1332(b)(1) (waivers for state innovation):

(1) IN GENERAL- The Secretary may grant a request for a waiver under subsection (a)(1) only if the Secretary determines that the State plan--

(A) will provide coverage that is at least as comprehensive as the coverage defined in section 1302(b) and offered through Exchanges established under this title as certified by Office of the Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services based on sufficient data from the State and from comparable States about their experience with programs created by this Act and the provisions of this Act that would be waived;
(B) will provide coverage and cost sharing protections against excessive out-of-pocket spending that are at least as affordable as the provisions of this title would provide;
(C) will provide coverage to at least a comparable number of its residents as the provisions of this title would provide; and
(D) will not increase the Federal deficit.​

​

 

[Immanuel]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

Not a difficult promise to make when you know that as President, you can't do a thing about it. Getting rid of ACA is up to the Supreme Court and failing that up to Congress.

Romney is only telling everyone what they want to hear. Come January 2013, he'll find a reason to flip flop back.

Immie

No he won't. Romney has been quite clear about how Obamacare is unconstitutional and unaffordable. This flip-flop talk is leftist propaganda at its best.

How can anyone be more clear than "Read My Lips: no new taxes!"



Or

"If you are a family making less than $250,000, my plan will not raise your taxes, period!"

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_7WUugsWng]Barack Obama: "I will NOT raise taxes. Period!" - YouTube[/ame]

But, Romney is some how different? Hey, I need to sell my bridge over the River Kwai! I can let you have it cheap... real cheap.

Immie

 

[dblack]

No he won't. Romney has been quite clear about how Obamacare is unconstitutional and unaffordable. This flip-flop talk is leftist propaganda at its best.

No it's not. It recognizing reality. Are you really deluded enough to believe what you hear on the campaign stump? The best we can do is look at the way these people have behaved when they did have power. How did the vote in Congress, what bills did they sign as governor. That's what I'm judging Romney on. He's a corporatist through and through. He's for all the corp principles of PPACA - most importantly the goal of getting everyone on the insurance gravy train.

By implementing the insurance mandate in Mass. Romney showed me his true contempt for liberty and his enthusiasm for the authoritarian state. Campaign rhetoric won't change that.

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

Not a difficult promise to make when you know that as President, you can't do a thing about it. Getting rid of ACA is up to the Supreme Court and failing that up to Congress.

Romney is only telling everyone what they want to hear. Come January 2013, he'll find a reason to flip flop back.

Immie

No he won't. Romney has been quite clear about how Obamacare is unconstitutional and unaffordable. This flip-flop talk is leftist propaganda at its best.

Cmon Gatsby. Youre smarter than that.

Here let Mittney tell you himself.



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9njHHyRI7g&feature=player_embedded]MittvMitt.com: The story of two men trapped in one body - YouTube[/ame]

You do realize that this is a propaganda video? They're intentionally taking a lot of stuff out of context.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You guys can pretend all you want that Romney is for Obamacare; but the reality is he's promised to do away with it.

I'm sure Romney is not going to be the one to tell people with sick kids, "Hey, the insurance companies should totally be able to refuse to treat your child for a pre-existing condition."

Let me see if I can explain something to you, this is really hard, so pay attention.

Insurance companies do not treat people, doctors do.

Not having insurance does not mean your condition does not get treated, it just means that payment for said treatment is not part of a contract you have with a third party to defer risk.