Thursday, January 31, 2008

More on Romney's Health Insurance Disaster

Two must-read posts on Romney's disastrous Massachusetts health insurance plan below. Romney is trying to blame the plan's skyrocketing costs entirely on the current administration. Even if Romney has a good sense of the business world, his health plan disaster demonstrates his lack of foresight on the inevitable course of big-government bureaucracies. Needless to say, the mainstream media and establishment Republicans are ignoring this huge black mark in Romney's record.

I. Gregg Jackson, PunditReview:
No Wonder Romney Never Discusses His Healthcare Plan…
Shikha Dalmia, senior analyst at the Reason Foundation has the latest figures on RomneyCare, and they don’t look pretty....
I have said many times that Mr. Romney’s healthcare plan that he signed on his way out the door in Massachusetts (billed as his “signature accomplishment” at the time) was inherently anti-competitive/anti-free market and would inevitably lead to contrived scarcities, inflated costs, and higher prices for consumers- the same things that always result from socialistic/command style systems- not to mention that inconvenient little fact that it established $50 dollars a pop abortions as a “healthcare benefit.”With all the talk about Romney being the only “economic conservative” it bears mentioning that his actual record tells a very different story.

II. Tom Blumer, BizzyBlog:
‘Universal’ Health Care ‘Terminated’? Yes, in California. But RomneyCare Is Alive in Massachusetts (and WE Are Paying for It)
Okay, I get that California is our most populous state, the land of uber-liberalism, and deserving of a shot or two when it tries, and fortunately fails, to pass something dumb.
But if the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal is going to exult in the Golden State’s inability to enact a “universal” health-care plan, the least it could do is spend more than about 30 words on the one such plan that exists — especially when it was the brainchild of a GOP presidential candidate now pretending to be a conservative.
I am, of course, referring to Massachusetts, its former governor, Willard
Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney, and the already-imploding Commonwealth Care aka RomneyCare....
UPDATE 2: Gregg Jackson just e-mailed and confirmed something I wasn’t sure of. While Mitt Romney is fond of saying how difficult it was to try to govern in a liberal state, the fact is that RomneyCare was an unforced error. No one was clamoring for it, and there citizen or legislative pressure to “do something.” The Mittster apparently felt that “universal” healthcare would be his signature accomplishment, and that referring to it would be a winning strategy in a presidential campaign. Uh, not exactly....