Conservatives and lovers of freedom, hear me well when I point this out. I’ve told you before that Mitt Romney has given us rhetoric when it comes to the issue of the individual mandate concerning health insurance. He has told us that he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, but with what? We haven’t heard an actual plan as of yet. We’ve heard the rhetoric, but we’ve seen the record in Massachusetts. On his recent trip we heard his praise for their health care system.
Romney’s words to Israel were:
“Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the G.D.P. in Israel? Eight percent,” he said. “You spend eight percent of G.D.P. on health care. You’re a pretty healthy nation. We spend 18 percent of our G.D.P. on health care, 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, compare that with the size of our military — our military which is 4 percent, 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of G.D.P. We have to find ways — not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to fund and manage our health care costs.”
I point this out to demonstrate that Mitt Romney while praising a health care system with an individual mandate will not lay out a clear plan of what he would replace Obamacare with. Now if he’s got an idea and it is to completely remove Obamacare and replace it with nothing, except to open up the sales of insurance across the states so that competition will drive the prices down, fine. Until then, his own record and his latest praise for a national mandated health care coverage system in Israel, can we trust him to do something different than has been proposed by Barack Obama?
The Raw Story reports,
The country’s health-care system includes an individual mandate clause, requiring citizens to buy one of four HMOs offered by the government since 1995, with the state covering 60 percent of a person’s medical costs. The remaining 40 percent is covered by income-related tax collections.
Last month, The Jewish Daily Forward reported that Israel boasts an average life expectancy of 82 years, four years more than the U.S., with half the mortality rate due to heart disease.
“I think that America can learn a lot from the Israeli system,” said one Orly Manor, dean of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Braun School of Public Health. “The quality is high, and the outcomes are good.”
Interestingly enough, the individual mandate was a big part of the health care system that Mitt Romney helped to implement as governor of Massachusetts.
Romney has already installed a flaming homosexual, Richard Grenell as his spokesman, who had to step down because his sexual perversion came under attack. Grenell promoted same-sex “marriage.” Romney put him in place and Romney claimed to be against same-sex “marriage” though his record as governor says something quite different. What does that have to do with the issue here, you ask? Simple, it presents a pattern. If you are opposed to an issue like homosexual ‘marriage,’ why on earth would you put someone as your spokesman who openly promotes it?
Mitt Romney has also installed former Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, a Mormon, to head up his presidential transition team. What’s the big deal about Leavitt? Well he was head of the EPA and Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Bush Administration. He also leads Leavitt Partners which the Cato Institute says:
Here we have the spectacle of a former Republican Health and Human Services secretary getting rich by helping states implement ObamaCare. Leavitt Partners (among other consultants) is helping states create the law’s health insurance “Exchanges.” Or the non-ObamaCare-compliant health insurance Exchanges that will by law become ObamaCare-compliant Exchanges.
These Exchanges—there is no such thing as a state-run Exchange—are the government bureaucracies that will make health insurance more expensive, induce employers to drop coverage, entrench ObamaCare, and dole out hundreds billions of debt-financed government subsidies to insurance companies.
Politico also cites Leavitt Partners as getting federal dollars to help in the implementation of Obamacare:
More than $300 million in exchange grants has already flowed into the states since the Affordable Care Act passed. That number will grow exponentially in the coming months, as states move from the initial steps of passing exchange legislation to the more lucrative task of setting them up.
For health consultants and information technology vendors, it’s already shaping up to be a gold mine…
The opportunity is, seemingly, everywhere. Even in states that have used executive orders and heated rhetoric to push back against implementation of the reform law, vendors still see possible contracts.
“There is a group that feels as though they don’t want to be associated with the Affordable Care Act,” said Leavitt Partners CEO Michael Leavitt, who was Health and Human Services secretary under President George W. Bush. “Privately, though, it’s clear that several of those are planning behind the scenes, because they don’t want to have a federal exchange.”
Now are we to assume from the record and the installation of Mr. Leavitt in a key position already and the money up for grabs in Leavitt Partners because of Obamacare that we should really expect a serious change in things when it comes to the Affordable Care Act? I’m thinking not, but then again, I’m just looking at the record, not the rhetoric here. Just look at what Politico pointed out and that’s $300 million to help set up these exchanges and said it was a veritable gold mine of which Mr. Leavitt is a huge beneficiary.
I dealt with Romney’s comments concerning Romneycare in another post and pointed out that Romneycare, though it was state mandated, used federal dollars, tax payer dollars. Romney also addressed Fox News Sunday at the time and said, “If we can do that (Romneycare) nationally,… we help the entire nation.” So understand something. The blueprint for Obamacare was Romneycare and you can call it a state mandate or a federal mandate. It doesn’t matter, because in the end the results are the same. You are required to purchase a product by the state whether you want it or not, you are penalized if you don’t get it, and both state and federal funds are used in the process.
Conservatives you better wake up to what we are being offered here and pay attention to what the record is and what is being said. It looks like ‘hoodwinking’ to me.
