Tag: RomneyCare

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ideological culture

Into Each Life, a Little Romney Falls

Some things I just “don’t get.”

How can either pro-​lifers or Obamacare opponents trust Mitt Romney? Sure, he says he’s pro-​life and he pledges to repeal the Democrats’ health care reform package. But for years he said he was for abortion rights; he switched in what’s been called a “flip-​flop-​flip” while governor of Massachusetts. Further, he signed into law the state’s health care program that served as Obamacare’s blueprint.

Not exactly a resumé upon which to build trust.

It’s tough to change the status quo. Perhaps that very fact drives many to such improbable avatars as Mitt.

But it’s even tougher to change the weather, and that’s also in the news.

Pat Robertson says that if we’d pray more, we’d be hit with fewer tornadoes.

I understand that prayer can have healing powers; I recognize that the theory of Divine influence on natural phenomena has a long, august history. But I learned, long ago, that rain (along with other natural occurrences) falls upon both the just and the unjust.

I read that somewhere.

But then, proponents of anthropogenic global warming think driving cars, burning coal and raising cows causes harsher storm weather, too — and that if we’d all just ride bicycles to work, we’d have Robertson’s promised “fewer tornadoes” — so perhaps implausible-​to-​me meteorological causation has a fairly universal appeal.

When left and right converge on the weather, it’s time to return to subjects I know more about. (Stay tuned. I’ll be here.)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Hewitt-​Romney Rationalization

Those who insist that RomneyCare isn’t as bad as ObamaCare need a reality check.

Both impose new price controls; both impose new taxpayer-​funded subsidies; both force people to buy health insurance; both massively expand government interference in our lives.

Former Governor Mitt Romney seemed to acknowledge the similarities when he suggested, shortly after Obamacare had passed, that he’d “be happy to take credit” for the president’s accomplishment. Now, though, with the glaring parallels so politically inconvenient, he pretends that parsecs of distance separate the two plans.

RomneyCare apologist Hugh Hewitt says that RomneyCare’s mandate forcing people to buy health insurance offends only “a handful of libertarian purists.” (Which I’d submit is far better than being a pure socialist or even a half-​and-​half socialist.) According to Hewitt, if we have no great objection to, say, smog-​emission mandates, what’s the big deal about being compelled to buy a product?! Anyway, he adds, states have the right to impose such mandates, whereas the federal government is constitutionally barred from doing so.

Regardless of how we assess particular attempts to combat pollution, pollution at least conceivably violates the rights of others. Your not buying something does not violate anybody else’s rights; being compelled to buy something does violate somebody’s rights — yours. 

Sure, RomneyCare affects “only” 6.5 million people, whereas ObamaCare affects some 300 million. But expanding governmental interference in the medical industry and into the lives of everyone is, either way, destructive and immoral.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

RomneyScare

As a candidate for the presidency, Mitt Romney has a number of things going for him. He’s rich, handsome, and has a funny first name.

Perhaps more importantly, he’s neither Donald Trump nor Newt Gingrich.

But still, he does have a niggly problem: His experience. He was the Massachusetts governor who signed a medical care reform law that provided the blueprint for the Democrats’ national version, now known (un)popularly as “ObamaCare.”

One of the best reasons to vote “Republican” next year would be to oust the politician who gave us such a bad bill. But, on matters of “health care,” Romney comes off as nothing less than the generic knock-​off of Obama. 

The Wall Street Journal recently published a critique of Romney’s Massachusetts fix, highlighting its “technocratic” (decidedly not “market-​based”) nature, individual mandate, and consequent necessary government mandate to subsidize the uninsurable. Plus, of course, its spectacular lack of cost containment. 

The one thing in the reform’s favor is that the ranks of those covered by medical insurance has grown. 

But that the state’s pre-​reform, utility-​like regulation of the insurance industry had priced so many out of the market? That somehow doesn’t get addressed — most certainly not by the program’s defenders or by Romney himself. Or many others. Pity.

Mitt gave a major speech last night, defending his “RomneyCare,” saying that his position “is not going to satisfy everybody.”

How can it satisfy anyone but big-​government partisans?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.