Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Presidential politics Republicans' choice: champions of 'Obamacare'
Posted by Max Brantley on Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 8:58 AM
Rick Santorum is right, for once, Ernie Dumas writes this week.
He says the race for the Republican nomination is boiling down to two candidates — Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — who can't very well use "Obamacare" against the president. They are solidly on record in support of the same — even more draconian, if you are inclined that way on the issue — health care solutions.
Read on:
By Ernest Dumas
Poor Rick Santorum could only shrug in frustration when he complained in the Florida debate about the supreme irony of the 2012 presidential race: Republicans made President Obama vulnerable two years ago by demonizing his health-insurance reforms and now they are about to nominate one of two men who cannot effectively use the issue against him.
“Folks,” Santorum said, “we can’t give this issue away in this election.”
That is exactly what they are doing.
If you hate the idea of requiring uninsured people to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, which is the main attack on the health law, then you have to be appalled by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. They favored, and Romney implemented, more draconian measures than are in Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
It is safe to say that were it not for the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans call “Obamacare,” President Obama would be flying pretty high. No, he has not fully repaired the wreckage of the George W. Bush years, except perhaps in foreign affairs, but it was the political disaster of health reform in 2009-10 that brought him down from his post-election popularity and made him assailable. Universal health insurance had enjoyed massive public support, but the confusing and messy fight to get it past a Republican filibuster in the Senate and the nasty advertising campaign against it by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and right-wing groups left the bill and the president who urged its passage unpopular.
All the Republican candidates for president began their campaigns by attacking the new health law and promising to repeal it as their first act if they are elected. The president cannot repeal a law but can only urge Congress to do so.
The GOP race has come down to Romney, who authored the Massachusetts insurance law that is the template for the Affordable Care Act, and Newt Gingrich, who championed its key provision, the mandate that large businesses and individuals who can afford it buy private health health insurance or pay a penalty. Both men said repeatedly that people should not be allowed to shift their medical costs to the insured by avoiding health insurance.
Listen to Gingrich in a 2005 interview on National Public Radio where he promoted a national law to require people to buy insurance: “Our goal has to be for 100 percent of the country to be in the insurance system.” The government might offer tax credits and vouchers as an inducement, he said, but it should include a requirement that if you have at least a modest income you must buy insurance or post a substantial bond to cover extraordinary medical expenses if you get sick or have an accident.
Both men have finessed the issue in the Republican race by saying they would try to repeal the act if they are elected although they do not offer cogent reasons for doing so. Romney merely explains that it was very good to require people in Massachusetts to buy insurance but it is not necessarily good for the rest of the country. He cannot explain why. Gingrich first denied favoring an insurance mandate but finally admitted that he had and that he had seen the light. As late as last summer he was saying that people should be forced to post a big bond if they didn’t buy an insurance policy. Now he thinks that might be unconstitutional.
Romney defended his own version of Obamacare in Massachusetts when Santorum assailed him in the Florida debate. He said people in Massachusetts still liked his plan, which he said was different from Obama’s.
He is right. His was tougher on businesses and individuals. A side-by-side comparison:
• Romneycare requires people to buy insurance or pay a penalty of up to $1,200 a year. Obamacare will require them to pay a penalty of only $95 in 2014 if they don’t purchase insurance. It would go up to $695 a year in 2016, a little more than half the Romney penalty. Insurance companies say the Obama penalty is so small it won’t force people to get insured.
• Romneycare provides a government subsidy to people who earn less than 300 percent of the poverty line. Obama will help people with family incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty line.
• Romney requires all companies with 11 or more employees to make a “reasonable” contribution toward insurance for the workers or pay a penalty of $295 per employee. Obama’s law exempts companies with fewer than 50 full-time employees, and if they do not share insurance costs with their workers they will have to pay a penalty of $2,000 per employee. Obamacare gives companies that have fewer than 25 employees tax credits of up to 50 percent of their contribution if they enroll their workers in insurance and if average wages are below $50,000 a year.
• Both provide for state exchanges where insurance companies will supply people a range of insurance options. (Republicans blocked that plan in Arkansas. The federal government will set up the exchange for Arkansans.) Both share other big features, like protecting people with pre-existing conditions from being cut off by insurance carriers and allowing children to stay on their parents’ policies until they are 26.
Gingrich and Romney talk about their eagerness to debate Barack Obama. Not on health care.
In his 2009 pre-campaign book, Gingrich explains the mandate concept in what would become Obamacare: “Allowing individuals to pass their health costs on to others reinforces the attitude that their health is not their problem and adds to the irresponsible, unhealthy behaviors that bankrupt the current system.” There is no more eloquent defense of Obamacare.
Oh, and Santorum? Running for the U.S. Senate in 1994 he called for a federal law like the one sponsored by Republicans that year requiring people to buy health insurance to end the cost shifting. Now he thinks that’s socialism.
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Comments (22)
Showing 1-22 of 22
Thanks for the information. Those details are interesting, and that's usually where the real dirt lies. Figureing what I pay for supplemental to Medicare, which is far more than the Medicare itself, but covers only 20% of the costs, I figure that single payer would be a bargain compared with the 30% that now goes to insure profitability of insurance companies, plus that paid by providers for paperwork.
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Santorum opposed the individual mandate in the 94 race. Mr. Dumas should check his source.
"Kenyan Socialist"
"He's taking away our freedoms"
"ObamaCare is unconstitutional"
They're about to run out of whoppers.
It *is* irresponsible for people to go without Health Insurance. Gingrich and Romney had it right once upon a time. It's also a CONSERVATIVE position to take to require people live responsibly and in a fashion that doesn't harm your neighbors or the social contract. It's not conservative to mandate they do it like Obama has drawn it up. (That way sucks and I hope it's all repealed.)
And I'm so tired of Rick Santorum and his stupid face. His health care policy messaging is a bunch of conservative talking points. Now alot of what he says is right (strengthen HSAs, allow purchase across state lines, tort reform.) That's awesome but what about people who don't take your incentives or follow your recommendations, go without any insurance, and show up at the ER sick?
Ding their credit report for what they don't pay while the hospital cost shifts onto the responsible people & the government? That's not a plan.
HSAs are wonderful but they primarily benefit the upper-middle class and rich. Conservatives have a roll of nickles in their pocket for incentivizing outcomes by creating make plans that allow everyone to use federal "pre-tax" dollars for this or that but when over 50% of the country doesn't pay federal income taxes and probably more live paycheck to paycheck explain to me where's the incentive for half the country to buy in to it?
Oh and Ron Paul's health care policy... there's a plan that checks all the boxes. End Result: A bunch of people dying in the streets. FAIL.
Since West Little Rock is knowledegable enough to know "Obamacare" sucks and should be completely repealed, the blog and all Americans will appreciate his outlining his solutions for advancing universal health care instead.
Thank you, WLR.
We hold our collective breaths . . . .
The irony is indeed delicate but the real irony, as WLR suggests, is even worse: it is conservatives basing their election platform on demonizing a conservative policy. The individual mandate has always been a conservative idea and fully consistent with conservative principles. The real fallout of this strategy is that conservatives are now seen as not having any principles at all. None. Zilch. They will attack whatever Obama does, period. Far from being conservative in any recognizable sense, they have become political extremists determined to wreck the country. Fascists, really.
oops I neglected to read the rest of WLR's post. After "It *is* irresponsible for people to go without Health Insurance. Gingrich and Romney had it right once upon a time. It's also a CONSERVATIVE position to take to require people live responsibly and in a fashion that doesn't harm your neighbors or the social contract."
The continuation of the post "It's not conservative to mandate they do it like Obama has drawn it up. (That way sucks and I hope it's all repealed.)" doesn't make any sense to me.
Why is it safe to say without Obama Romney care the president might be flying high? When it would probably be safer to say what Mr Dumas avoids saying. That, had Obama actually pressed, and pressed hard for Universal/Single Payer/Tri Care he might be flying higher than the snake belly he's under now. That if Obama refused to be a Republican in sheeps clothing, he and the country would be better off. Obama made sure those proven successful models would not be considered. Why lower yourself to the level of defending your guy who's only success has been selling out the country to the the republican, insurance and pharma industrial complex dream policy which they couldn't pass themselves (for good reason) for decades.
If you don't like Santorum or Gingrich or Romney for their positions on health care for the last years... then how on earth can you live with yourself by excusing Democrats for actually doing it? Especially since it raised the highest health costs in the world significantly, forces millions to buy something they could not afford to begin with from profiteers and still leaves tens of millions without care or going bankrupt for having the audacity to simply fall ill or injured.
As for mentioning " repairing wreckage of the George W. Bush years, except perhaps in foreign affairs,"... Please tell us how on earth you can type that with a bit of sincerity... and I will remind you of hundreds of instances where his entire administration and party in congress firmly legitimized the Bush era or made things worse. Have you not noticed we didn't leave Iraq.. except exactly how Bushco and the SOFA agreement planned... and that we have not really left it? The very same week the administration and main stream media sold us the lie that we were leaving the administration and congress overwhelmingly re-upped the Authorized Use Of Military force in Iraq. We are still at war there, with many of their neighbors, drones over their air space and thousands of highly armed Americans still in Iraq... and in 120 other countries. Have you not noticed overwhelming false consensus, deadly sanctions and lies about weapons programs in re Iran are exactly the Bush Cheney program Democrats are selling Americans right now, today? Have you not noticed President Obama maintains to be assassinated lists of American citizens and has actually assassinated American citizens and their children without so much as a formal charge of any kind?
But it's okay as long as a Democrat is doing this.
The part of Obamacare that is too strong is the $2,000 penalty per employee for companies with more than 50 employees. In essence, every company that profited less than $2,000 per employee, will go bankrupt in 2014. Companies in this situation usually employ a lot of unskilled workers. Why would Obama put this "tax" into place with it based on the number of employees a business has, rather than on the profitability of the business. Employ 100 people; make $195,000 in 2013; go bankrupt in 2014 due to Obamacare.
Behind WLR's innocuous-sounding, "It's also a CONSERVATIVE position to take to require people live responsibly and in a fashion that doesn't harm your neighbors or the social contract," is his failure to mention the REQUIREMENT that everybody, whether they can afford to or not, purchase enormously inflated health insurance that packs the pockets of the executives and stock holders -- then says that's what it means to "live responsibly."
WLR's "conservative" policy keeps America ranked 37th in the world in terms of health care quality and efficiency.
Back to holding our collective breaths for WLR's solutions . . . .
Whenever "tort reform" is listed as a part to any health care solution, I know the poster is uninformed. Thanks, West Little Rock, for allowing me to have an out to paying any attention to what you have to say regarding health care.
Tort reform, WLR? That one got a fork stuck in it years ago. Texas tried "tort reform" and it failed miserably. Seems the reality is nothing like Rethuglicon Tea Pot Head talking points. Texas's definition of tort reform is paying people a fair price for damage done to their person or property.
Reality is a tough master.
Hey munkle, I've got an out for you, brah... 250mL nembutal. And you'll be doing your part to keep down our medical expenditures so it's a win-win.
Health Care is a comprehensive problem. Not addressing tort reform (and other things) is just as bad as pretending it's the silver bullet while ignoring the problems that are inconvenient to your political disposition. For right wingers that would be the externalities that their prescious freedom to be irresponsible generates.
Yes, individual mandate is a bit of a sh*t sandwich for all parties.
Liberals get their jollies telling people what to do in command-and-control fashion but circumscribed somewhat by the depressing outcome of sending them straight into the arms of the over-regulared and under-competitive Big Insurance industry. An industry they (liberals) ruined long ago with the prohibition against competing across state lines so they could be regulated to the hilt with requirements to cover all sorts of things (e.g., defacto socialized medicine.)
At the conceptual level, requiring people to be responsible for their health care is the right policy. But that doesn't mean that you can't still f*ck it up with what and how you mandate they do it (e.g., Obamacare.)
AMW... you really should get that comprehension problem looked at.
It's been said many, MANY times but...I'll NEVER understand how so many non-zillionaires continue to vote against their own best interest by voting Republican.
Sure, and aside from the zillionaires, there are the religious zealots who don't give a damn about anything other than being anti-abortion/gays and keeping women in their place; and there's the remnants of the KKK-crowd who hate Obama above all other things. But those folks alone wouldn't have made the 2008 election as close as it was. So obviously there are a lot of middle-class comparatively reasonable folks who continue to vote against common sense, history and their own self-interest...even now after Republicans have given up all pretense that they stand for anything other than gathering all the money they can for the top one percent and for any kind of help for the middle-class/poor.
Years ago the Republican Party AT LEAST pretended it cared about things like affordable healthcare for all folks, a basic safety net and sustaining the middle-class. Now, they don't even bother with that pretense anymore...as demonstrated by the hateful anti-healthcare, anti-Food Stamps, anti-women, anti-anything from the last century that regularly flows from the current crop of Presidential candidates.
Obama should be a shoe-in...but then I remember they've spent the last 12 years (at least) making sure that Democrats, especially the poor/disenfranchised, will have a very hard time voting...'cause one thing about most poor folks, they typically don't vote against their own self interest.
"Hey munkle, I've got an out for you, brah... 250mL nembutal. And you'll be doing your part to keep down our medical expenditures so it's a win-win."
Now, now...you're blowing your troll cover. Even "reason-trolls" like yourself are just that - trolls. And, tort reform is just another term for "removing responsibility and incentive for big players to do right"; and I'm not neglecting the economic irrelevance of "tort reform" either, as Sound Policy already pointed out.
Logically, there is no difference between opposing universal health care and supporting the killing of children. Our health care system kills kids every day for the crime of having parents without insurance, in addition to incenting abortions, increasing the cost of running a small business and loading up the economy with non-value-added bureaucracy.
But that's OK, because it's the most profitable system in the world and therefore, according to modern conservative thought, the most moral.
On the other hand, immoral, satanic, european single payer would ensure all children get health care, reduce abortions, incent the creation of small businesses and increase national efficiency.
It's almost like we live on Planet Backwards. Everyone's hitting themselves with a hammer and bragging about how good it feels.
Profit Margin by industry: http://biz.yahoo.com/p/sum_qpmd.html
Health Care plans at 4.5%. Confectioner's at 10.7%
WLR, overhead of American healthcare c ompanies is 30% and that includes all of those high salaries, bonuses, and stock options which come out before that low 4.5% number. Anyone who has ever wiorked in management knows you can make the numbers do anything you want Medicare has an overhead rate of 6-8% because no one is getting million dollar sdalaries, multi-million dollar bonuses, and stock options. Why allow 22-24 of the heathcare dollars we spend to have no effect on healthcare? That is the issue.
We are about #37 in healthcare outcomes. I think I read that we were lower than Cuba, and certain far east countries that we fought. We are ahead of Afganhstan though if it makes you feel better but American forces are making headway there to improve their healthcare.
In most other countries, your familty income doesn't dictate whether you can die of easily curable diseases. Only in the US and certain Africa countries, the ones where churches donate money to buy tents and medicine.
So let's replace private bureaucrats with public bureaucrats for purposes of efficiency?
Not sure if trolling or just stupid.
West Little Rock = "Not sure if trolling or just stupid."
I think I've already answered that for you: you're a troll.
I don't think you're stupid. Fed a line of BS? Yup. Clueless? Yup.
But, stupid? Nah...stupidity and ignorance are two distinct professions.
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