Past Governor William Weld: Romney signed into law a health insurance reform modeled on a conservative market-oriented approach that emphasizes personal responsibility.
That is really what Romney did.
"What was once a Republican idea in good standing was now, suddenly, unconstitutional and the greatest threat to freedom in American history."
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BOTTOMLINE-BOTTOMLINE:
Romney ONLY REQUIRED FREE RIDERS TO PAY for some of the costs of healthcare (emergency room free care, see EMTALA Reagan law below. (This agrees with the conservative principle that people should, if able, pay for the services they use.) They were mandated to pay the fee, not anything else. More like a user fee than some oppressive mandate!
Romney will on day one issue an executive order exempting all states from the Obama mandates. And then repeal ObamaCare (though making sure the pre-existing conditions coverage is assured).
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OTHER BOTTOMLINES
It is a false and illogical generalization to equate this with a much different ObamaCare. It's nonsense!
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WHY THE PROBLEM OF FREE RIDERS OCCURRED: THE REAGAN LAW: EMTALA
Under Reagan, Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA. EMTALA, one of the great unfunded mandates in American history, required any hospital participating in Medicare—that is to say, nearly all of them—to provide emergency care to anyone who needs it, including illegal immigrants, regardless of ability to pay. Indeed, EMTALA can be accurately said to have established universal health care in America—with nary a whimper from conservative activists.
Under the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan proposed by Richard Nixon in 1974, “every employer would be required to offer all full-time employees the Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan. Additional benefits could then be added by mutual agreement."
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"Stick around long enough in Washington, and everything changes... The individual mandate eventurally became a left wing idea..." ,
WHY THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE!
A blinding insight of the obvious!
Although I am an independent, I figured this is a super important time in our history, where we need to rethink the direction we are going.
So, as I was writing on RomneyCare, I noticed that it is not the individual mandate that is the problem at all.
But few saw that, as it became the "object of disaffection" of the opposers of ObamaCare. And it was "politically incorrect" to speak of it with anything but disdain - and to lump anybody associated with it into the "evil" category..
First, I discovered that Romney designed his plan for "no new taxes" but built in a "user fee". The fee was for "free riders", who could afford health insurance but who chose not to, since they could get free health care paid for by the government! Sure they had to go through the hassle of going to an emergency room, but the savings were huge!.
And the cost to the state was huge, too.
Though Romney wrote the plan also to save the loss of $395 million from the Feds (as a Governor that is his obligation), he saw the wisdom of applying one of the basic conservative principles which I call:
"If you use it, you pay for it".
It seems that the government pays for alot of things that only benefit a limited number of people, therefore charging the other taxpayers for something they didn't use. That is also called a "user fee" - where the individual is responsible for paying for what he uses. (!!!),
Romney vetoed the attempt of the 85% Democratic legislature to charge business for not covering their employees, but it made sense to charge people for services they are using but not paying for - when it was by their choice.
Cost sharing and responsibility for paying for your costs is not such a bad idea!
But ideologically the "right" has jumped on it as being the evil twin, blamed on Romney (though recommended for years by the conservative Heritage Foundation and Gingrich and Santorum)
As I looked at the comparison, it seemed obvious to me that the problem was not in charging people to cover their appropriate shares, but the problem was the bastardization of how it was applied.
The individual mandate is not the problem. It's the mess and the very poor design of ObamaCare.
It's appropriate to be against ObamaCare because of its harm, cost, and negative business effect, but we should give up on making (mandated) cost sharing evil, as it is a very useful concept..
All this defending that Romney had to do and all this attacking by opponents and all this misunderstanding by the citizens was totally inappropriate. It wasn't the cost sharing mandate at all. And all those people who didn't vote for Romney simply had a misunderstanding.
But now we can make it right and attack the right problem of ObamaCare.
And fortunately we have someone who has practical experience in the field, Romney, one of the world's most effective analyzer/implementers!
Think about it.
The Independent
