Yes, Virginia, There IS A Difference Between ObamaCare and RomneyCare
For those who hear Team Obama claim that ObamaCare is just RomneyCare on a national level, think again. Here are the facts of the matter illustrating that couldn’t be further from the case.
Additional details can be found here and here.
Now, for someone who can speak from experience as a lifelong resident of Massachusetts. An old college friend of mine saw this chart posted on Facebook and made the following comment:
LOVE THIS! I live in Massachusetts and I can tell you, RomneyCare was a big f**king deal. It had overwhelming bi-partisan support, but it was also tempered by Romney’s pen. And it worked best before Deval Patrick came in and added more and more services to the mandated offerings. Those mandates drove the costs up and pissed people off. It’s not perfect, but Massachusetts never needed ObamaCare. And like the chart says, if I don’t like it, I can move.
(Mind you, when we were in college together, he was liberal / left-leaning, but today he is to the right of me.)
So there you have it. We need to elect Mitt Romney as President, George Allen to the U.S. Senate, re-elect all the incumbent GOP House members and elect Chris Perkins to Congress from the 11th Dist. They will vote to repeal the job-killing ObamaCare tax while their opponents from Tim Kaine on down to Gerry Connolly will vote to maintain it.
President
U.S. Senate
U.S. House 11th Dist.
3 Responses to “Yes, Virginia, There IS A Difference Between ObamaCare and RomneyCare”
Citing the U.N./World Health Organization ranking that puts the U.S. “lowest in the world”? Sorry, but no, the United States for all of its flaws does not have a worse healthcare system than the UK or France or Sweden (unless of course you draw up the rankings based on the amount of government spending which, of course, is a primary factor in the WHO rankings). That by itself is enough to draw the rest of this chart into serious question.
And it looks like some of those footnotes don’t actually correspond to the numbers in the charts. They’re simply not sourced at all. For instance the claim that “MA ranks highest of 50 states” appears alongside the number 26. The text of the note, however, reads: “26. An analysis of the Democratic health care overhaul by the Congressional Budget Office shows it would cost $940 billion over a decade and expand insurance to 32 million people.” The link leads to an article that clearly has nothing to do with any sort of ranking of Massachusetts’ healthcare system.
How does the person who complied this chart know that everyone read Romney’s healthcare bill before passing it? The note for that one simply links to the bill and states that it can easily be read in an hour. That certainly makes it more likely that people read it before voting on it, but to claim to know for sure that everyone read it is careless at best if not downright misleading.
“Does not regulate HC industry”
Simply links to the bill itself. Would even Romney himself claim that his bill doesn’t regulate the healthcare industry at all? I tend to doubt it.
“Cuts Medicare/Doesn’t cut Medicare”
Here’s another case of a footnote that doesn’t match up. The text for note 10 clearly does not relate to the claim that Romney’s bill did not cut Medicare. In any event, aren’t conservatives in favor of cutting government programs like Medicare?
”Did not raise taxes”
There is no source for that claim which is obviously false to boot. See: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/romneycare-making-a-fool-of-every-republican-it-touches-since-2006/. An increase in net government spending is a tax increase by definition.
There are some difference. It’s just that they’re not major differences in the aspects of the plans themselves (and I’m not even sure why popularity polls should make any difference when it comes to socialized medicine). We’re all very fortunate that Governor Romney was only able to inflict his plan on only one state (although he has made no secret of the fact that he hopes other states will follow his example). That, however, says nothing about the actual provisions of Romney’s plan and their striking similar to the President’s monstrosity.
To quote Michael Tanner (writing for National Review Online back in December 2010 [http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/254174/romneys-chronic-health-care-problem-michael-tanner]):
“Romney’s problem is that, despite his demurrals, the parallels between Obamacare and his 2006 Massachusetts reform plan are striking. Both plans are built around an individual mandate requiring citizens to purchase a government-designed insurance plan. Both plans dramatically increase government subsidies and Medicaid eligibility. Both plans use an exchange to redesign the individual and small-group insurance markets, creating a ‘managed competition’ model for insurance. And both Massachusetts and Obamacare prohibit insurers from managing risk, shifting costs from older and sicker individuals to the young and healthy. Neither Obamacare nor Romneycare includes any substantial cost-containment mechanism.”
And in one sense, it’s not even the case that Romney’s plan only affected Massachusetts. As Michael Tanner points out in the same piece, because Romney’s plan was underfunded it relied heavily on federal subsidies, costing the rest of the country about $300 million.
In this case, the similarities are more important than the few differences. If Romney takes the advice given by the guy that made up this chart the President and the Super PACs are going to kill Romney on this issue. Trying to make a huge distinction between his bill and the President’s where there are only small distinctions is a recipe for disaster. That’s why I’m not just playing the devil’s advocate. Using this or something like it as talking points would do harm to the Romney campaign not help it.
The honest thing to do would be for Romney to own up to all the similarities, admit that his policy choice on this issue was wrong, and move forward from there. Of course, he won’t do that.
The key factor is the GOAL of national health care……….no, the US is NOT Massachusetts, but on a national basis, there are almost mega-millions who need but do not receive health care. Take, for example, pregnant mothers-to-be whose health issues can be addressed up front to heal her problems and those of her soon-to-be born children. This is what national health care is all about!!!. And the sooner it is taken out of the political realm, the better. As a veteran of Capitol Hill, you know members seldom read anything………they have highly paid staffers who are experts in the field who read the details. I believe that at the end of the day, Obama (and many citizens) want to provide the wonderful benefits of our health system to all citizens. (as an allegory, many citizens want to see that all citizens are born……………why do these same citizens want to deny the newly born health care??)
Please show me an article where someone in the US died for lack of health care. Just one. Show me where one pregnant woman was denied health care because of an inability to pay.
In contrast, I can show articles where people died in the UK while waiting for health care, articles written by doctors in the UK. That happened to someone I knew quite well. Her cancer treatment was delayed for 5 months and she ultimately died because the cancer had 5 months to spread. She and her husband had not paid into the private UK health insurance and were stuck with the government services. It was nightmare that no one in the US would ever go through. People in the US are never delayed treatment like that, not even the most indigent among us.
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