After the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate, Romney repeated his plan to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with something else. Ironically, everything he proposed for his replacement plan were things that are already in ObamaCare. There’s just one teeny thing he left out — the individual mandate!
Never mind that Romney himself proposed and championed the individual mandate in Massachusetts, saying:
No more ‘free riding,’ if you will, where an individual says: ‘I’m not going to pay, even though I can afford it. I’m not going to get insurance, even though I can afford it.’ It’s the ultimate conservative idea, which is that people have responsibility for their own care, and they don’t look to government to take care of them if they can afford to take care of themselves.
And now it is the one thing he doesn’t like about ObamaCare.
Even more ironically, fiscally responsible businessman Mitt Romney is going to keep everything about ObamaCare except for the one thing that pays for it. And yet he claims that he is going to reduce the deficit. Will the American people fall for this snake-oil salesman?
UPDATE: Romney sometimes claims that the individual mandate was good at a state level, but he doesn’t support it at the federal level. But he is lying. In 2009, Romney encouraged Obama to use the individual mandate as part of health insurance reform.
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Is there any control on the prices of this healthcare we are required to purchase? I haven’t heard much about the bill other than the usual rhetoric.
Absolutely! I’ll just mention two of them — 85% of premiums is required to be spent on health care claims. That means that insurance companies cannot exceed 15% for administrative costs, sales commissions, and profits. (For small companies and individual policies, the number is 80%). If insurance companies exceed this number (and most do) the excess must be refunded. The rebate for 2011 is still being calculated, but it is estimated to be around $1.4 Billion. That’s actual money that purchasers of health insurance are getting back.
Also, by insuring more people, fewer people will have to resort to getting their health care in the emergency room, which will lower costs. Problems will get treated earlier and for less money.
It is important to realize that ObamaCare is NOT a government takeover of health care, it is a regulation of health insurance. As such, it is focused on controlling the costs of insurance providers, not health care providers (doctors and hospitals).
I’d love to see legislation that controls health care costs, but how that could pass without even more screams of “death panels” is beyond me. The “death panels” accusation was judged the “lie of the year” by PolitiFact. I can only imagine what will happen if Congress actually tries to control health care costs.
Bottom line — Republicans almost torpedoed ObamaCare by lying about it controlling health care costs. So if you are upset about the bill not controlling costs as much as you would like, you know who to blame.
Here’s a very concise and easy to understand list of all the things in ObamaCare: https://www.facebook.com/notes/steve-fitzgerald/what-exactly-is-obamacare-and-what-did-it-change-explained-like-youre-a-5-year-o/10150906130595642
Many of them are aimed at lowering costs.
Thanks… I’m starting to feel better already. 🙂
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