Romney likes parts of Obamacare

[Niemeyerite]

I like parts of Obama care too. What does that make me?

A democrat. And you are a democrat, actually.

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

I like parts of Obama care too. What does that make me?

The Republican Party have made it perfectly clear that they don't want your support.

[Torie]

Can Romney explain how he intends to pay to allow those with pre-existing conditions to get coverage and for young adults to keep their coverage under their parents (conveniently the two most popular provisions of Obamacare) without an individual mandate. Because if those are the only two parts of Obamacare he wants to keep then health insurance premiums are gonna jack up for everybody involved.

That is a most excellent question.  Did Mittens make a gaffe, or is it a major tack? I don't know how he can put lipstick on the mandate pig given how the political pawns have been moved in the past, unless he is going the Torie tax credit route, but unless you raise taxes overall to pay for it (another Mittens no-no), the question becomes how you pay for it?  Is it going to be some claim of transformational restructuring that makes the delivery more efficient and less redundant?  How creditable is that, unless Mittens goes to an HMO structure for Medicare, and that isn't going to copped to either I don't think - certainly not for those over 55. 

It appears that Mittens may have put himself in a box. Not good. Am I missing something here?

[Brittain33]

I think he's doing hand waving about how there should be a free market solution for this problem, while declining to acknowledge that the free market won't provide a product that does this.

[Torie]

I think he's doing hand waving about how there should be a free market solution for this problem, while declining to acknowledge that the free market won't provide a product that does this.

Yes, but it seems implausible that Mittens chances of getting away with that magic act without being caught are no greater than those of the Wizard of Oz.  Doesn't Obama have a pet dog?  The Slugfest article that I put up has some interesting speculation by Fallows as to why Mittens tends to shy away from detailed policy prescriptions during campaigns. The problem here is that I fail to see any potential prescription that a doctor could write for Mittens that doesn't have unpleasant side effects for him given his own self imposed political constraints. Do his guys know what they are doing?

[Maxwell]

Later in the day, Romney flip flopped again on this. Now he's flip flopped on this issue an odd number of times. Another epic fail for Romney.
 
http://www.alan.com/2012/09/09/mitt-romney-flip-flops-on-health-care-again-within-six-hours-takes-back-what-he-said-this-morning/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+liberaland+%28Alan+Colmes+Liberaland%29

Romney is just unstoppable.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Can Romney explain how he intends to pay to allow those with pre-existing conditions to get coverage and for young adults to keep their coverage under their parents (conveniently the two most popular provisions of Obamacare) without an individual mandate. Because if those are the only two parts of Obamacare he wants to keep then health insurance premiums are gonna jack up for everybody involved.

That is a most excellent question.  Did Mittens make a gaffe, or is it a major tack? I don't know how he can put lipstick on the mandate pig given how the political pawns have been moved in the past, unless he is going the Torie tax credit route, but unless you raise taxes overall to pay for it (another Mittens no-no), the question becomes how you pay for it?  Is it going to be some claim of transformational restructuring that makes the delivery more efficient and less redundant?  How creditable is that, unless Mittens goes to an HMO structure for Medicare, and that isn't going to copped to either I don't think - certainly not for those over 55. 

It appears that Mittens may have put himself in a box. Not good. Am I missing something here?

I think what's going on is the following, though I'm not sure.

It was already the case prior to Obamacare that insurance companies could not deny insurance on the basis of a pre-existing condition to those with continuous coverage. So if you had one job and were insured, got some condition, and then changed jobs to an employer with a new insurer, the new insurer couldn't refuse to cover you. This avoided the problem of people just signing up when they got sick, since you had to have had coverage already. But Obamacase prohibited denial of coverage even to those who hadn't had coverage before. This of course requires a mandate to ensure that people don't just sign up when they get a diagnosis. Romney's problem (and, in a way, Obama's too) is that a significant chuck of swing voters seems to favor the pre-existing conditions thing and oppose the mandate. Which is kind of incoherent, but there it is.

Now, when pressed on this today, Romney's campaign later claimed that all he ever meant was that he supports the old thing about pre-existing conditions for people with continuous coverage. So I think what's going on is that Romney's people have decided to say stuff about requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions that's sufficiently vague that it can simultaneously convince voters that he's keeping the popular part of Obamacare and yet also convince media fact-checkers that he's not lying because there's an interpretation where he's talking about the other thing.

[Likely Voter]

Mitt didn't gaffe, tack or flip flop.

He lied.

He is trying to seem reasonable on MTP, appearing to keep the good and popular parts of Obamacare, but he knows that he cant do that without the mandate. So he says something with a tiny tiny grain of truth that clearly implies he supports the Obamacare pre-existing conditions stuff when what he was really saying is nothing like that at all.

[King]

Ha ha.

[Torie]

Can Romney explain how he intends to pay to allow those with pre-existing conditions to get coverage and for young adults to keep their coverage under their parents (conveniently the two most popular provisions of Obamacare) without an individual mandate. Because if those are the only two parts of Obamacare he wants to keep then health insurance premiums are gonna jack up for everybody involved.

That is a most excellent question.  Did Mittens make a gaffe, or is it a major tack? I don't know how he can put lipstick on the mandate pig given how the political pawns have been moved in the past, unless he is going the Torie tax credit route, but unless you raise taxes overall to pay for it (another Mittens no-no), the question becomes how you pay for it?  Is it going to be some claim of transformational restructuring that makes the delivery more efficient and less redundant?  How creditable is that, unless Mittens goes to an HMO structure for Medicare, and that isn't going to copped to either I don't think - certainly not for those over 55. 

It appears that Mittens may have put himself in a box. Not good. Am I missing something here?

I think what's going on is the following, though I'm not sure.

It was already the case prior to Obamacare that insurance companies could not deny insurance on the basis of a pre-existing condition to those with continuous coverage. So if you had one job and were insured, got some condition, and then changed jobs to an employer with a new insurer, the new insurer couldn't refuse to cover you. This avoided the problem of people just signing up when they got sick, since you had to have had coverage already. But Obamacase prohibited denial of coverage even to those who hadn't had coverage before. This of course requires a mandate to ensure that people don't just sign up when they get a diagnosis. Romney's problem (and, in a way, Obama's too) is that a significant chuck of swing voters seems to favor the pre-existing conditions thing and oppose the mandate. Which is kind of incoherent, but there it is.

Now, when pressed on this today, Romney's campaign later claimed that all he ever meant was that he supports the old thing about pre-existing conditions for people with continuous coverage. So I think what's going on is that Romney's people have decided to say stuff about requiring coverage for pre-existing conditions that's sufficiently vague that it can simultaneously convince voters that he's keeping the popular part of Obamacare and yet also convince media fact-checkers that he's not lying because there's an interpretation where he's talking about the other thing.

Yes, under the COBRA program, but that insurance is about 50% more expensive, then if you did not have a pre-existing condition, but have to change carriers due to switching jobs where there is no health insurance, and have to get individual insurance. I had my own little game to play (I wanted to get insurance that allowed me to contribute to a health savings account), but dropped the game when I found out how expensive COBRA insurance was.

[後援会]

I find nothing objectionable with the statement. The PPACA is over two thousand pages. You can't honestly say that every single page is filled with nothing but pure awful. The vast majority, sure, but not every single page.