MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

This is why I’m not voting for Romney

• Posted by Beth on January 25th, 2008 filed in 2008 election, Candidates, General, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Politics, Video   Alabama · health care · polls    

UGH.

I’ll vote for (and campaign for) Romney in the general election should he be the nominee, but RomneyCare is another major reason I can’t vote for him in the primary. If he is elected, I’ll fight this to my dying breath.

There are many other reasons why I’m supporting John McCain, of course. What follows is McCain’s ad about RomneyCare, but it goes much deeper than a 30-second ad, of course.

Spending on the state’s landmark health insurance initiative would rise by more than $400 million next year, representing one of the largest increases in the $28.2 billion state budget the governor proposed yesterday. The biggest driver of the cost increase is projected growth in the number of people signing up for state-subsidized insurance, which now far exceeds earlier estimates. State and federal taxpayers are expected to bear nearly all of the additional cost. Although the price tag for the initiative is ballooning, the governor yesterday reaffirmed the state’s commitment to ensuring that nearly every resident is covered.

And who do you suppose is going to pay the bill for all this idiocy?

State and federal taxpayers are expected to bear nearly all of the additional cost.

Did you notice the phrase “and federal taxpayers”? It’s not enough that the taxpayers of Massachusetts have to finance this mess. Those of us with better sense than to live in that state will have to pony up our money as well.

Why am I paying for an unsuccessful program that I don’t support concocted by politicians I never had a chance to vote against?

As governor, Mitt Romney tweaked the Nixon formula in 2006 when he helped devise a second round of Massachusetts health care reform: employers in the state that do not offer health coverage face only paltry fines, but fines on uninsured individuals will escalate to about $2,000 in 2008. On signing the bill, Mr. Romney declared, ‘Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance.’ Yet even under threat of fines, only 7 percent of the 244,000 uninsured people in the state who are required to buy unsubsidized coverage had signed up by Dec. 1. Few can afford the sky-high premiums.

The cost of not having health insurance in Massachusetts is going up. When the new year begins Tuesday, most residents who remain uninsured will face monthly fines that could total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by the end of 2008, according to penalty guidelines unveiled by the Department of Revenue on Monday. Individuals who failed to sign up for health insurance by the end of 2007 faced only a one-time loss of their $219 personal income tax exemption. The fines are part of an increasingly aggressive approach written into the health care law designed to pressure Massachusetts residents into getting insurance. The law, intended to create near-universal coverage in the state, was approved by lawmakers and signed by former Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney had a dream of universal consumer-driven health care. Then he met Beacon Hill and its Democratic legislators. Their plan, introduced this week, is a Frankenstein’s monster of tax penalties, expanded government-insurance programs and unfunded mandates. A presidential aspirant, which Mr. Romney certainly is, will decide what is the best he can do for his state. The rest of us, however, should not take this plan for a model.

Romneycare: The Slippery Slope Slips Some More - In my paper on then-Governor Romney’s plan, I warned that the state’s new managed competition bureaucracy, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, would operate as a regulatory body, setting up just such a slippery slope to government control of health care. The more we see from Massachusetts, the more it looks like I was right.

The law also created the Connector, a program for providing low-cost policies aimed at attracting younger and healthier residents who currently do not have insurance. Critics have questioned demands by the Connector’s overseers for prescription drug coverage, as well as policies with premiums capped at $200 per month.

“There is a likening of this central concept of his the Connector to managed competition, which was at the heart of the 1993 Clinton health care proposal,” Tanner said. “In essence, you have Romney embracing ‘Hillarycare,’ and that doesn’t play well on the right.”

But the central premise of Clinton’s plan - an “individual mandate” requiring that every American have health insurance - is precisely what Romney proposed in the Bay State, in what was seen as a bold approach to attaining universal coverage. The idea became a pillar of the law, which he signed in April 2006.
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What Hillary proposed is in many ways the Massachusetts plan gone national, and I think that’s great,” said MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber, an early adviser to Romney on the healthcare reform law who has consulted with all the major Democratic presidential candidates. “We are the shot fired around the world again - there’s a whole new movement in healthcare started by what we did here. And rather than claiming credit for it, Romney’s running away from it.
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[Romney] also contended that Clinton’s plan would expand government by allowing the uninsured to buy into Medicare or one of the private plans available to federal employees.

But Massachusetts also used existing government programs to cut the number of uninsured, expanding some eligibility guidelines for the state’s Medicaid program, as well as stepping up efforts to enroll those already eligible, adding tens of thousands to the rolls, said Michael Doonan, executive director of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Health Policy Forum at Brandeis University and a member of Clinton’s healthcare task force in the early 1990s.

Gov. Mitt Romney signed legislation Wednesday that would make Massachusetts the first state to require everyone to have health insurance, just as drivers must have automobile coverage.

Senator Kennedy’s remarks today at Faneuil Hall are below.

STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY ON THE SIGNING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH REFORM LEGISLATION April 12, 2006 Boston, Massachusetts

Governor Romney, President Travaglini, Speaker DiMasi, assembled leaders and friends.

You’ve given Massachusetts just what the doctor ordered.

With the signing of this landmark health reform bill, after so many years of false starts, our actions have finally matched our words and we have lived up to our ideals.

Romney is facing criticism from some conservatives that the bill he helped engineer would expand government and impose a new financial burden on businesses. The plan has already come under attack from the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., the op-ed columns of the Wall Street Journal, antitax activists such as Grover Norquist, and MSNBC pundit Tucker Carlson.

Romney, as he has sought to raise his national profile, has chided GOP leaders in Washington for veering from the bedrock party principle of limited government. Critics say Romney’s signature contribution to the healthcare plan — a provision requiring all residents to carry health insurance or face financial penalties from the state — will only cast him as one of those big-government Republicans.
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The governor often refers derisively to Clinton’s failed bid for universal coverage in the 1990s as ”Hillarycare,” but Clinton praised Romney’s efforts yesterday, telling the Associated Press, ”To come up with a bipartisan plan in this polarized environment is commendable.”

“I like this health care bill that’s passed,” Sen. John Kerry told radio host Don Imus Friday morning. “I think it’s terrific. Massachusetts has set a good course on that and I give everybody involved in that credit.”

The Romney plan would tax individuals who don’t buy their own health insurance. And businesses who didn’t provide health insurance for their employees would be penalized $300 per year. A similar proposal in New York carries a much stiffer penalty for businesses - $300 every five weeks.
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The Romney plan is also winning praise from another strange bedfellow, Clinton strategist James Carville, who likes the proposal’s bipartisan pedigree.

“It’s a feel-good story, this Romney thing. Republican Governor. Democratic legislature,” Carville told the AP. “Romney is an ascendant guy.”

Being a native of Massachusetts, I am of course more inclined to look favorably on a bill prided by a Republican governor than legislation sponsored by the commonwealth’s congressional delegation of Neanderthals (Kerry, Kennedy, Frank, Meehan, et al). The lesson here is to never let party allegiances blind you.

Mitt Romney can pretend this is a “small government” approach to health care, but all the evidence is to the contrary.

And more importantly, those of us who aren’t in perfect health have the most to lose, as the health care system becomes overburdened, with supply being unable to meet demand. All you have to do is look to the “free” (nothing is “free”) military and VA health care systems–both of which I unfortunately know all too well–right now for an example of what you’ll see on a national scale.

By the way, I find it interesting that some of Romney’s supporters say this is a great thing because it shows his ability to work with Democrats, while at the same time they vilify John McCain for the same thing. Or alternatively, some portray Romney as a firebrand conservative. Actually, I don’t find it interesting. I find it simply dishonest. But I suppose if the only reason one has to support him is “McCain (or Giuliani or Huckabee) sucks*,” it is hard to elucidate reasons why I should support him.

As I said, I’ll vote for him in the general because I suppose RomneyCare might be marginally better than HillobamaCare–might be–and I suppose I’ll have more “say” in what he does or doesn’t do than what Hillobama does. But really, some of Romney supporters (particularly my fellow former FredHeads and the talk radio media) have lately been putting him more into Huckabee territory in my rankings of the primary candidates.

* Note to those who will say it’s not fair for me to write “Romney sucks” while saying others vilify McCain, and that I’m contradicting myself–don’t make me laugh. I don’t think “Romney sucks.” He’s just not my choice, and I have said repeatedly why I’m supporting John McCain.