Why do I ask, you might wonder? Well, here’s the first line of Michael Graham’s Herald column on Mitt Romney and his health care problem:
How do you say “chutzpah” in Mormon?
Hmm. I didn’t realize “Mormon” was a language. But apparently it’s OK to ask how you would translate certain Yiddish words into different faiths. And I think it’s certainly fair to call “wingnut” a faith to which Michael Graham subscribes. Hence the title of my post. The hilarity just never stops around here.
Anyway, gratuitous Mormon-baiting aside, Graham’s column supplies an interesting rundown-from-the-right of the disastrous position Romney has put himself in by trying the thread the needle between opposing President Obama’s health care plan and not completely repudiating the one he had a role in here.
Mitt Romney is out on a book tour insisting that Romneycare and Obamacare have very little in common. “It’s the difference between a racehorse and a donkey,” is Romney’s line. And besides, the former Bay State governor writes in his new book, “the plan is working.” …
But for Romney to say “there’s a big difference between what we did and what President Obama is doing” is . . . well, my Mormon friends would call it a violation of the 9th Commandment. [Oy. There he goes again.] …
But the basic elements of Obamacare are all there: an individual mandate that nearly everyone buy insurance; subsidized insurance based on income; a non-insurance “tax” and employer mandates. The Cato Institute calls it a mirror-image of Obamacare.
Romney, on the other hand, calls the individual mandate “the ultimate conservative plan.” So Barack Obama is a conservative?
Mitt, you gotta lay off the unpasteurized milk . . .
In related news, yet another aspect of the health care issue is a threat to Romney:
Romney’s landmark 2006 universal health-care law allows low-income residents covered under Commonwealth Care to get taxpayer-funded abortions. Abortion has become a lightning rod in the highly charged battle over President Obama’s health-care push…. The plan’s abortion funding came under renewed attack this weekend, with political blogger and former Atlantic Monthly writer Matthew Yglasias speculating on Twitter that it was “enough to sink (his) 2012 bid.” …
Though Romney has virtually disavowed his health-care plan – the first of its kind in the nation – White House aides have acknowledged it was a “template” for Obama’s proposal, which could only mean for grief for Romney, according to Boston University political professor Thomas Whalen.
Said Whalen: “He’s been running away from the single accomplishment of his administration now that the Obama health-care bill is using the Massachusetts model of health-care reform.”
Is it too early?
Nah.
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p>I think this time around Romney doesn’t go as far right. We’ll see the return of I know the economy Romney. We shall see.
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p>2. Anyway, David, here’s my question:
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p>If the health care plan is enacted, do you think a Republican contender running on “Returning 30 million people to no health insurance unless they can buy it, we must kill Obamacare entirely?”
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p>Or run on “Mend it don’t end it. Let’s do a bunch of stuff to fix worst aspects of it. But we’re not gonna go back to square 1?”
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p>If the latter, wouldn’t Romney be positioned okay for that?
The basic point about Romney’s lie is right, but in addition to Michael Graham’s snide comments about LDS, he repeats this falsehood:
This is utter bull.
I used to be a young healthy person until I got appendicitis and needed an operation and an overnight hospital stay. Everybody should pay insurance because we just don’t know who is going to get sick. Just like everybody should pay for the fire department even if their house never catches on fire.
The singular of data is not anecdote.
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p>Look, my home’s exterior is brick. It’s insides have sheet rock and/or plaster walls, depending on the wall. It also has a building-wide sprinkler system, building-wide smoke detectors, and is directly wired in to the local fire department.
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p>The odds of my home burning are extremely small, and the odds of it spreading are even smaller. The odds aren’t zero, but they are low — which is one of the reason why our insurance is so much lower.
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p>Likewise, young people free of chronic disease are healthier, and tend to need insurance far less often. There’s no question that adding young people to the pool stabilizes it, and can (I don’t know if it is) be used to cross-subsidize the sick and the elderly. An uninsured appendectomy runs $20k-$35k (based on a very quick internet search, not scientific, etc). The rate of appendicitis varies by age and gender, and the abstract for The epidemiology of appendicitis and appendectomy in the United States suggest that there are high rates both pre-19 (not in your example’s bracket) and 35-44 yo (also not in your bracket). I can’t read the article to see the data, but it would seem that the rate of appendicitis among the young healthy population, while higher than lots of other things, still isn’t terribly high. While $35k is quite a bit of money, I contend that many people would be able to pay that bill off over time, perhaps with help from parents.
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p>Which is to say that, in fact, health insurance wouldn’t help those young people get care (the pain is great — you’re going to the E.R. no matter what), and that, while expensive, it is possible to pay it off.
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p>I’m not claiming it’s a bad idea for young people to carry insurance; I am claiming that treating insurance as binary doesn’t make much sense — young people are less likely to require expensive medical treatment, and therefore should be expected to make different decisions regarding insurance and health care — just as the insurance companies make different decisions w.r.t. premiums and the like.
Everyone should have free health care, paid for by the federal government.
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p>If an uninsured victim is brutally assaulted by a broke thug, and they go to the hospital, the VICTIM gets billed.
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p>This is justice?
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p>Is it right to make businesses get insurance for employees when they may spend more to employ a sick person? Perhaps a qualified but unhealthy person whould not be hired.
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p>Did you know that some companies that are not transferring jobs to the third world, are moving to Canada, because they have socialized medicine?
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p>Looking back, perhaps it was a bad thing that this nation was so “Fat and Happy” after World War II.
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p>In Great Britian, after the war, there were bread lines for the first time in British history. Labour had the government. Aneurin Bevin created socialized medicine for Britain. Nobody there goes bankrupt because of illness.
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p>But of course, all that I’m saying is only backed by logic and justice, not campaign contributions for idiotic, moronic campaign ads.
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p>We need an ANEURIN BEVIN and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE NOW.
…GOP opponents are going to kill him with the taxpayer funded abortion thing in Iowa- it will be humorous to watch him try to wriggle out of it.
“my Mormon friends would call it a violation of the 9th Commandment.”
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p>He still has any left after being this much of an asshole in his use of language? I’d have been offended and told him to shove it long ago.
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p>As for Romney, it’s never too early for the flaming zeppelin. đŸ˜€
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p>”Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right…here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” Damned for liberalism, damned for conservatism, Romney has yet to learn that same lesson Obama hasn’t learned…stick to a f-ing philosophy, get some backbone, and at least gain some integrity even if you don’t get any friends from the opposite side of the aisle.
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p>Everyone sees through Romney.
Putz; unless you’re feeling charitable.
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p>Then you say “schmuck”.