Time columnist Joe Klein provided a useful summary of Romney’s health care proposal, and criticisms of it from left and right, in a recent issue.
He wrote, “Here is how it would work. Massachusetts now spends about $1 billion a year to provide emergency health care for at least 500,000 uninsured citizens. About 200,000 of those are young people, predominantly male, who are making enough money to buy health insurance but figure they don’t need it. They would be required to buy a relatively inexpensive health insurance policy, with higher deductibles and co-paysâthat’s where the “mandate” comes in. Another 100,000 are extremely poor people who are eligible for Medicaid; a concerted effort would be made to bring them into the system. The remaining 200,000 are the people who have been most neglected by the system in the past: the working poor, people who have low-end service jobs or work part time for employers who don’t offer health coverage.”
He added, “Romney’s gamble is that Massachusetts can take the $1 billion it spends on the uninsured and use it to subsidize coverage for the working poor. The Bush Administration will kick in another $1 billion, over three years, to make the experiment work if Romney can get a suitable proposal through his state legislature. “Our plan would cost the poorest eligible families only about $2 per week in premiums,” Romney said. “The more you earn, the more you pay.” Sounds simple enough. So why hasn’t it been tried before? Because interest groups on the left and right hate the idea. Conservatives don’t like the mandatory part: if a 28-year-old software designer doesn’t want to buy health insurance, why should the government force him to do so? Simple answer: fairness. The rest of us pay for it now when he drives his motorcycle into a tree and runs up a huge medical bill. Health insurance should be no different from auto insurance, a basic civic responsibility. There’s also a larger argument for the common good: the more healthy young people are paying into the system, the lower the premiums for everyone else. But Democrats, skittish since the Clinton proposal was trashed in 1994, have refused to call for an individual mandate. In the past two presidential campaigns, Bill Bradley, John Kerry and Howard Dean proposed comprehensive health plans, but fearing the political consequences, none of them required software-designing motorcycle riders to kick in.”
Click here for the full piece.
Nice clothes, Governor.