So, when I went to try to find this quote by Romney about firing insurance companies because I wanted to see if it was a dumb as it sounded, I found this Krugman blog piece (quoting an economist named Aaron Carroll) that explains much better than I can why it shows that Romney is completely ignorant of the lives of real people, especially in regards to health care:
It is frustrating that the media meme has been mainly this sort of “strawman” argument about how it shows how Romney likes to fire people when the real meme should be how it shows that Romney has no understanding whatsoever of the problems that real, not-insanely-wealthy people face. (Admittedly, there used to be a guy by the same name, who was Governor of Massachusetts, who may have had a little more comprehension of this stuff…but that person is apparently now long gone.)
I can’t really speak to the OP, since I haven’t been following this election very carefully and really don’t care that much about Romney one way or the other, but I don’t think Krugman is exactly an unbiased source here. What little I’ve heard though is that the health care plan that Romney is trying to deny ever happened when he was Governor is curiously similar to what the Dems were trying to adopt a few years ago…so, if he’s clueless about healthcare, it’s interesting that his plan seems so similar. Perhaps Krugman has caught Romney flip flopping due to pandering to his current audience, or perhaps he’s spinning this (pretty vague) blog post to make what is likely the only real threat from the Republican side look bad or fire up the base against him.
Frankly I think it’s wasted effort, since I can’t imagine Romney beating Obama in this election, regardless of how things work out. But I’m a bit suspicious of a blog piece from a guy like this, even if he IS a conscientious liberal.
I suspect this is the new anti-socialist healthcare Romney, not the old pro-socialist healthcare Romney. And the criticism seems right on, and should be obvious for anyone for who money is an issue.
I’ll let the rest of the blog I linked to - not by Krugman, but no doubt a liberal, living in Massachusetts and liking RomneyCare and all - speak for itself.
I don’t know…that doesn’t really clarify it for me. Maybe he thinks his own health care reform is better. Or, maybe he’s just pandering to the crazy right wingers until he has the election locked up, and then, assuming he becomes president he’ll move towards the center. Like, I don’t know, say Obama? Well, pandering to the crazy left wingers and then moving towards the center of course…
I was going to post that Romney’s version of reality was the opposite of what was going on, but that link already does that.
Under the affordable care act you can pick your insurer through an exchange, and because pre-existing conditions will be banned in 2014 and there will be subsides, people will be able to move from insurer to insurer (I think) if they want to, within reason (I don’t think you can refuse an employer plan or refuse medicare, etc).
Under our current system you can’t ‘fire’ your insurer. If you get sick you can’t get insurance elsewhere due to pre-existing conditions.
Romney is totally orwellian on this issue, and nobody mentions it.
What is there to be biased about? Are you saying that Romney didn’t say what he said? That it was taken out of context? That the insurance industry works more the way candidate Romney seems to believe it does than the way it is described in what I quoted?
True…which is why I noted “Admittedly, there used to be a guy by the same name, who was Governor of Massachusetts, who may have had a little more comprehension of this stuff…but that person is apparently now long gone.”
But, then, which Romney are we electing…the one who implemented a health care plan in Massachusetts that by the accounts that I have read is similar in many respects to Obama’s or the one who is going to make it one of his top priorities to repeal Obama’s plan because the free market for health care is apparently just glorious at the moment?
Somehow, I seem to have missed the pandering to the crazy left wingers part.
You missed it in the primaries when he was trying to become president?? basically, if he got the Democratic nomination he HAD to pander to his base…same with whoever wants to become the Republican nominee has to pander to the crazy Republican base. Haven’t you seen all the threads with disillusioned left wing 'dopers lamenting how Obama sold them out? Do a search…I can think of half a dozen I’ve seen around here in the last year or so.
I always look for character moments like this one in primaries, for Bush the lesser it was the confederate flag issue, it did not matter that Bush’s hero Sam Houston (He had a huge painting of Houston in his office while he was governor) refused to have the confederate flag raised and supported the union, Bush decided that it was better to throw San Houston under the bus and side with the state that still wanted to have the confederated flag on their capitol building.
Mittens just ran into that moment here, his “trow your ideals under the bus for political expedience” moment that shows a lack of character.
Specifically? Take your pick. He sold out on the health care bill (what, no single payer system? TRAITOR!!). He sold out on now prosecuting/executing Bush et al. for war crimes. He sold out on not hammering the banks or increasing taxes on business, or myriad other pie in the sky lefty issues that they THINK he could have done but didn’t…or didn’t try hard enough on. Or something. Like I said, there are plenty of threads on this board with left leaning 'dopers lamenting how Obama hasn’t fulfilled his promises, or has otherwise disappointed them. For a while I was seriously worried, as it seemed to me that the left was getting apathetic about Obama and he might actually lose. Fortunately, it seems that the Republicans and their right wing are even loopier than the Dems with their left wing, so Obama seems to be in no danger of losing the reelection.
-XT
I was taking issue with the idea that Obama had pandered to them, not that some people on the left weren’t unrealistic with their expectations.
I think he made good faith efforts on most of what he promised. A lot of very liberal types wanted more, but he had the most obstructionist congress of all time to fight against.
Politifact keeps a decent record of Obama’s promises that make a handy reference to look up if you’re so inclined. You can count on them to have a good citation on him making the promise and take their analysis of whether he kept it, broke it or compromised however you want.
Here’s a page on then-candidate Obama promising to make a push for comprehensive immigration reform in his first year, for example. Obameter: | PolitiFact
Maybe your point was supposed to be entirely rhetorical but I think it’s a useful site to remind myself of things.
Mr. Carrol point is entirely untrue. People go to their doctors for things other than cancer and health insurance companies have incentives to keep customers healthy regardless of whether the population is captive or not. I have never had a major illness yet I have gone to the doctor dozens of times and have had plenty of chances to evaluate my health insurers. Some i have liked and others I have not, however I have never contemplated changing my insurance because the preferential tax treatment the government provides to employer provided health care means that it would cost me thousands of dollars to change providers. Car insurers are always sending junk mail to me promising low prices and great service and I can’t watch TV for five minutes without being asked to change my insurance for something that is cheap and has a 98% satisfaction rating. This despite the fact that it is impossible to know whether your car insurance is good until you have an accident and it is to late to change. State farm does not provide me with good service because they are such wonderful people, they provide good service and low rates because they are afraid of my firing them and hiring someone else and even more than that they are afraid of me telling other people about my bad experience. Reputation is something that insurance companies live and die by. An example of this is the insurance companies that paid off for Kristallnacht despite the german government trying to prevent them. CareFirst gave me crappy service because they knew it would cost me thousands of dollars to fire them. If we had government run healthcare like Mr Caroll would like, if I did not like my health care plan I could move to Canada.
Mr Romney’s point is just plain common sense, more competition is good for customer service and less competition is bad for customer service. This is as true in health insurance as it is any other market.
But there is more competition under “Obamacare” (and Romneycare) then there is under current employer-based system. Romney has criticism has no relation to the recent legislation, as far as I can tell.
Excactly, Procustus. The ability to “fire” your health insurance company is in no way reduced by Obamacare, and is in some very real ways increased by it. It’s just another way to tell the “Obamacare is government-run health care” lie.
The criticism is that Obamacare preserves the current employer based system and Romney was saying that he would like to move toward a situation where individuals buy their own health insurance instead of it being a job benefit. He was not contrasting Obamacare with Romneycare but Obamacare with his ideal solution.
Yes, that’s a point that people seem to be missing. From Romney’s web site:
Now, that might (hah!) be a sound-bite, oversimplified statement addressing a complex problem, but it does show that Romney wants to move away from the current system that tends to lock you into a provider based on your employee benefits.
A lot of these arguments also fail to touch on the fact that health insurance is freakin’ expensive, and that for most people, if they weren’t getting it through their employer as a benefit (regardless of what tax breaks are or are not being offered) they wouldn’t be able to afford it all. That’s why a lot of people choose to even do without COBRA when they lose their job - even though COBRA offers the group rate the employer was paying which is ostensibly cheaper than what you might be able to find on the open market.
So, yeah, it’s not something most people are going to change willy nilly.
