Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
To the good people of Ricochet who support Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination, please look at this as an opportunity. There simply has to be a better defense of Romney and/or Romneycare than the one being provided by his supporters Ann Coulter and David Frum. I was alerted to the situation by this Frum tweet:
@davidfrum Bravo for Ann Coulter for championing universal private health coverage w subsidies for those who need them. http://bit.ly/yX0TFC
Now, at this point in his career, I'd be surprised if Frum didn't champion what proponents call "universal private health coverage" and what the rest of us call a gross invasion of personal liberty. But if I know one thing, it's that Ann Coulter would never in a million years do the same, right?
In what is either high performance art or clear evidence that there's been some kind of body-snatching, Coulter defends Romneycare on the oddest grounds ever. She accuses conservatives of equating the Massachusetts plan to the federal plan solely because they have similar nicknames and cover the same general topic area. As Philip Klein writes at The Washington Examiner:
This is a shameful argument, and she must have a very low opinion of conservatives if she thinks this is actually true. In reality, people don’t compare Romneycare and Obamacare because their nicknames share the same basic structure, but because the laws have the same basic structure. Specifically, both laws expand Medicaid, force individuals to purchase government-approved insurance or pay a fine, and provide subsidies for individuals to purchase government-designed "private" insurance policies on government-run exchanges.
She points out that some conservatives supported Romneycare at the time. She doesn't mention the many conservatives who opposed it at the time. Then she argues that Romneycare is constitutional, an argument against what exactly? Are conservatives claiming that it's not? Hardly. As Klein asks, do conservatives oppose massive tax increases because they're unconstitutional? No.
Finally, she argues that all the problems of Romneycare are due to Massachusetts Democrats. There are a few problems with the argument. Namely, Romney signed the law (while seated underneath the smiling gaze of Ted Kennedy) knowing that Democrats had enough votes to override Romney's line-item vetoes. He signed it after he'd announced he wasn't running again. As Klein writes, "Part of being a limited government Republican is realizing that once you put the infrastructure in place, successors can always add to it."
If Coulter has decided that Romney is the best of the Republican options and she can’t stand Newt Gingrich, that’s fine. If she wants to argue that conservatives should trust Romney’s commitment to repealing Obamacare, okay. But she shouldn’t defend big government social welfare policy as conservative and treat conservatives like they're too dumb to understand the difference.
It's hard for people to hold competing thoughts in their head at the same time. This is precisely my worry -- that supporting Romney will lead people where Ann Coulter inexplicably has arrived -- to a full-throated defense of Romneycare.
So I ask the wonderful Romney supporters here -- help out those of us who are terrified. Is this what you have to do if you sign on to support Romney? Allay our fears! Show us a better way.
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Feb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Mendel
Ed G.
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A health care guru? Why in the world would I want such a thing? I'm not inclined to get into the wonky weeds on this; how is a health care guru going to help us make a case on federalist, constitutional, moral, or fairness grounds?
This mentality is the reason we have Obamacare today -- because too many on the right have no idea how much of the electorate thinks.
A large fraction - perhaps even a plurality - of American voters (including many on the "center right"); instinctively believe that removing government control over and subsidy of the healthcare market will lead directly to disadvantage people dying early deaths by treatable illnesses.
We badly need a "healthcare guru" to calmly explain to voters in the middle how market deregulation can actually improve access to healthcare and, in the long run, make the system much more fair. This means getting into some weeds.
.....
Yes, it's called persuasion and I'm all for it. More than a guru, though, we need someone to make the case on broad moral, fairness, constitutional, and federalist grounds. Duane was referring to our own "program". That sounds like something else altogether.
Edited on Feb 2 at 5:46pmFeb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Mendel
Ed G.
Mendel
This sounds like Heritage really blew it. That fact that no one threw it back in the face of Heritage indicates just how much we need conservatives to exert their influence on the party. · 3 minutes ago
Actually, I think conservatives were the ones who blew it. Had they done their homework and come up with good, conservative policy solutions to healthcare (such as a structured path to deregulation, HSAs, etc), there would have been no need for Heritage to come up with such a slapdash plan on the quick. · 22 minutes ago
Opposing Hillarycare and socialized medicine back then didn't require any policy solution, did it? It was Heritage who came up with a bad plan and the less than conservative Republicans to embrace it when they didn't have to. What were the problems back then that people wanted to see solved?
Feb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Apr '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Xennady
James Of England
I would argue that
a: The individual mandate is constitutional at a state level (where not prohibited by the state constitution).
b: The mandate is bad, but is not like slavery.
c: "It is bad so it must be unconstitutional" is not serious. The law matters. ·
a: I disagree. No offense, but this seems to me like an after-the-fact rationalization that Romney invented to defend himself after Romneycare proved an albatross and he desperately wished to avoid further flip-flopper accusations.
b: The mandate merely codifies the slavery that already exists- that is, the gunpoint charity currently enforced upon the populace to sustain the mass of dependents needed to provide enough votes to maintain the present political class in office. I shudder to contemplate what that class will come up with if they are given yet more power of coercion.
c: I disagree again, strenuously. This is the most grimly serious of all questions- freedom or slavery. ·
a: Can you outline, with support, a Constitutional clause Romneycare violates?
b: Do you honestly feel that your life would be like Jourdan Anderson's if you had to buy health insurance?
c: Serious topic, unserious argument.
Apr '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Ed G.
James Of England
.....
Ed G.
No, the base isn't "interested in seeing him grovel, genuflect, and beg absolution for past sins". Rather, because of those past sins (and a current refusal to repudiate this particular sin) we're skeptical that he actually means what he says here. Also, even if we decide to swallow hard and trust him, I think he's going to have a hard time convincing the general electorate to repeal Obamacare when the Romneycare he still supports is so similar. Yes, there are some distinctions, but the spirit is the same and that will matter. ·
Fortunately, the electorate already opposes Obamacare, by a pretty stable margin. All we need is two, maybe three more senate seats and we can remove the individual mandate, and most of the rest, by reconciliation. Mitt does just fine attacking Obamacare. · 4 minutes ago
That's before Obama has a chance to make a direct rebuttal. I'm not saying Romney's a sure loser on this, only that he has a weakness here that the other candidates just don't have. ·
Obama has been unsuccessfully defending Obamacare for years. What unheard argument could he have in reserve?
Feb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
James Of England
a: Can you outline, with support, a Constitutional clause Romneycare violates?
b: Do you honestly feel that your life would be like Jourdan Anderson's if you had to buy health insurance?
c: Serious topic, unserious argument. ·
a: Can you outline, with support, a Constitutional clause that allows Romneycare? Because I think you have the concept of the Constitution exactly backwards.
b: No, because Jourdan Anderson was at least able to escape- and no one doubted he had been in bondage. Modern Americans are simply expected to labor for ever-increasing portions of their lives for the political class and its clients without complaint. If they object scorn and derision follow, and if they refuse to pay, prison. But then again Jourdan Anderson had to emigrate from Tennessee to Ohio to escape his predicament- which is the sort of choice increasingly made by other Americans to escape theirs.
c: Again, I disagree. But it's typical of the Republican party to simply dismiss the concerns of its constituents, contemptuously- and is exactly what I expect from Romney should he be elected.
Tiresome, this is- and it will not win Romney my vote.
Edited on Feb 3 at 2:05amOct '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Mandating purchasing of private health insurance is clearly constitutional for states. Remember the tenth amendment? All powers not reserved to Congress fall back to the states. States don't need to find authorization in the Constitution the way Congress does.
Healthcare is a tricky issue. It's obvious to any political junkie who's ever been abroad that universal health coverage is inevitable. There are plenty of nations with functional private health markets (the U.S. not among them) that provide universal coverage. It'd not a bad model to have.
ObamaCare pretends to set up a private healthcare market, though in reality it does not. I believe it was Heritage who coined the law as "socialism via microregulation." The basic idea of subsidized exchanges that provide affordable, universal health coverage is something Republicans have always supported--it's the regulation, unfunded Medicaid expansions, and (recently) the individual mandate that we've opposed.
Apr '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Xennady
a: Can you outline, with support, a Constitutional clause that allows Romneycare? Because I think you have the concept of the Constitution exactly backwards.
b: No, because Jourdan Anderson was at least able to escape- and no one doubted he had been in bondage. Modern Americans are simply expected to labor for ever-increasing portions of their lives for the political class and its clients without complaint. If they object scorn and derision follow, and if they refuse to pay, prison. But then again Jourdan Anderson had to emigrate from Tennessee to Ohio to escape his predicament- which is the sort of choice increasingly made by other Americans to escape theirs.
c: Again, I disagree. But it's typical of the Republican party to simply dismiss the concerns of its constituents, contemptuously- and is exactly what I expect from Romney should he be elected.
a: This is a confusion between the Massachusetts and Federal constitutions. The feds have enumerated powers, the states plenary power.
b: I honestly think it's kind of offensive to suggest that you're worse off than plantation slaves.
c: The idea of America as a nation of laws is fundamental to its founding.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Sisyphus
.... satisfaction of any plausible majority through some comprehensive federal solution......
We need only point to Canada and Europe to see why these "solutions" are inhumane .......
If you expect people who actually understand the issue to stand down, I suggest you adjust your expectations.
Sisyphus, 1) No one is proposing a comprehensive federal solution in the manner of ObamaCare. I am suggesting that we propose our own acceptable solution, not just holler "never!" and then seriously pursue it, rather than always being reactive. We have a problem in that there seems to ber a large group that believes the answer is to kill ObamaCare and leave a hole. That "hole" is how we got into this mess in the first place.
2) The "issue" is provision of health care, not the perils of neglecting conservative lassez faire. We've tried to ignore this for years, going instead for sloganeering fluff- and that has allowed the problem to get worse and worse, giving us this creeping statism. The Telegraph chronicles the execrable NHS bureaucracy, not general European health care.
3) Speaking of Europe, if you combine good pieces of the French, German, and Swiss systems, you have a pretty good approach.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Mark Belling Fan
From Gallup, just a few months before ObamaCare passed:
The crux of the issue is that people don't like paying so much for health insurance. Deregulation will help bring down costs to a point, but even at that point it will still be expensive. ......
What is your solution for voters that expect a free lunch, Duane? You appear to be saying that our side should offer some sort of vitamin supplement in lieu of the full lunch. · 21 hours ago
You have to see exactly how the question is phrased to apply the result meaningfully. Costs are going up, with systems that perpetuate the problem, making the current systems unsustainable, including for those employed, with good plans. If you took a survey of SS, the public would respond positively- on the assumption that it isn't going broke; same for Medicare. Since both are going broke, public surveys about the present are less useful than they might be.
I will put up a post on my ideas, MBF. It may take a couple of weeks.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Actually, Bush did more to secure the border than any administration before or since- he and Chertoff were regularly reamed out for waiving the NEPA studies to proceed ahead with the fence.
But his Medicare D bill is a solid illustration of how to govern. It is a good bill, there as a blocking action to prevent the Dems from simply adding drugs to Part B (Keith Hennessy explained all that). But in addition, he got Medicare demo programs for premium support (now killed by ObamaCare), and HSA's, which Obama is trying to kill.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Xennady
James Of England
I think that you're confusing the federal and state constitutions. The Constitution has enumerated powers. The state constitutions are different from pre-revolutionary era governments because they have a republican form of government, but they don't have enumerated powers.
I think you're arguing that the Federal Constitution of 1787 doesn't apply to the states, which it does. Otherwise Illinois could ban guns, which it can't.
So the individual mandate is unconstitutional in Massachusetts as well as in the rest of the United States. · 19 hours ago
Wrong, Xennady. The SCOTUS interpretations are divided between Federal only and those that are applied to the states as well, usually through the 14th amendment in the case of individual rights (the "due process" clause); whether or how the courty decision is applied to the states is a very interesting and active area of Constitutional scholarship. If the Feds can't do something because of enumerated powers, the states still may be able to do it, and personal mandates under police power is one area that is not even controversial. Settled law.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Chris Deleon
Mendel
.....
The sheer inability of the GOP to even talk cogently about healthcare...
You make a point that we are weak because we didn't face the issue. I can accept that.
............
And the only kind of "guru" (why does it have to be one person?) that we need, is one who will reform and reduce the government's involvement, not grow it. Perhaps, at most, set in place policies that will catalyze and incentivize reforms the market needs, such as letting employees take their insurance with them across jobs and states. (Our current employer-provided system, for example, came from 1930s wage controls). · 18 hours ago
You meant WWII wage controls. In the 1930's, all government misguided policy was to try to prop up wages.
Every movement needs a visible leader, and lots of acolytes. The fact that Republicans don't pay attention to this issue is its own proof. And pretending here that there is no public demand to resolve this is not helpful.
We can blithely toss out solutions- tell me why interstate portability is not already law. I can tell you. BTW, it was an issue in the Massachusetts debate.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Ed G.
Mendel
Actually, I think conservatives were the ones who blew it. Had they done their homework and come up with good, conservative policy solutions to healthcare (such as a structured path to deregulation, HSAs, etc), there would have been no need for Heritage to come up with such a slapdash plan on the quick. · 22 minutes ago
Opposing Hillarycare and socialized medicine back then didn't require any policy solution, did it? It was Heritage who came up with a bad plan and the less than conservative Republicans to embrace it when they didn't have to. What were the problems back then that people wanted to see solved? · 18 hours ago
Having no alternative back-uo plan to fill the demand hole is exactly why ObamaCare came about to fill it.
Heritage's solution was absolute mainstream of non-Ron Paul conservative intellectuals as the private market solution. Due to details of practical implementation, it is still not the answer.
Apr '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Duane Oyen
Chris Deleon
You make a point that we are weak because we didn't face the issue. I can accept that.
............
And the only kind of "guru" (why does it have to be one person?) that we need, is one who will reform and reduce the government's involvement, not grow it. Perhaps, at most, set in place policies that will catalyze and incentivize reforms the market needs, such as letting employees take their insurance with them across jobs and states. (Our current employer-provided system, for example, came from 1930s wage controls). · 18 hours ago
You meant WWII wage controls. In the 1930's, all government misguided policy was to try to prop up wages.
Every movement needs a visible leader, and lots of acolytes. The fact that Republicans don't pay attention to this issue is its own proof. And pretending here that there is no public demand to resolve this is not helpful.
We can blithely toss out solutions- tell me why interstate portability is not already law. I can tell you. BTW, it was an issue in the Massachusetts debate. · 22 minutes ago
I don't know this story, and am curious.
Feb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
James Of England
Ed G.
.....
That's before Obama has a chance to make a direct rebuttal. I'm not saying Romney's a sure loser on this, only that he has a weakness here that the other candidates just don't have. ·
Obama has been unsuccessfully defending Obamacare for years. What unheard argument could he have in reserve?
I don't know about unheard arguments, but it will be difficult for Romney to make an effective rebuttal either substantially or stylistically. When debating a trapped Romney, Obama's arguments may gain some traction by comparison.
Edited on Feb 3 at 12:33pmFeb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Duane Oyen
Ed G.
.....
Opposing Hillarycare and socialized medicine back then didn't require any policy solution, did it? It was Heritage who came up with a bad plan and the less than conservative Republicans to embrace it when they didn't have to. What were the problems back then that people wanted to see solved?
Having no alternative back-uo plan to fill the demand hole is exactly why ObamaCare came about to fill it.
Heritage's solution was absolute mainstream of non-Ron Paul conservative intellectuals as the private market solution. Due to details of practical implementation, it is still not the answer.
Current Democrats seem to favor socialism, and a large portion of the population seems to support them. Should we therefore develop a watered down socialism as a backup plan so we don't lose our credibility?
What is the problem you think needs to be solved? Is it something the federal government is authorized to solve? Why shouldn't we have a similar plan to solve hunger?
Feb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
James Of England
a: This is a confusion between the Massachusetts and Federal constitutions. The feds have enumerated powers, the states plenary power.
b: I honestly think it's kind of offensive to suggest that you're worse off than plantation slaves.
c: The idea of America as a nation of laws is fundamental to its founding. ·
a: And we're back to where we started. If the government can force people to give buy health insurance there is effectively no limit to what it can force people to do.
b: I did not suggest I was worse off than a plantation slave. I noted that we are both forced to labor to support others against our will,
c: Well, yes. The problem is that the United States is more and more not a nation of laws. I note that Obamacare has thousands of pages which will be used to generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations- but the politically connected get waivers. I could go on- Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd- Frank, countless EPA regulations- but I hope you get the idea.
May '10
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Most of these debates, the libertarian side assumes that the choice is between policy X and nothing- they prefer nothing. I believe that "nothing" is not smart; but the issue here is that the choice was not Manichaean.
The 2006 Massachusetts legislative Dem advantage was Senate 34-6, house 139-21. A strong constituency was pushing "single payer" health care, because the state had almost $400 million in expiring Medicaid funds, out of $1 billion total cost, that had to either be applied or forfeited. This was the golden opportunity to create the Massachusetts Canadian health care model.
Romney had two choices- sit it out and let the government system bill pass, or dig in and try to cobble together a coalition in favor of a private market approach. Because of the combination of the Medicaid cash and the heavy legislature imbalance, there was no "do nothing" alternative.
Romney called on Heritage and AEI/Wharton's Prof. Pauly, the legislative Democrats retained Jonathan Gruber, who later worked for Obama.
The result was to protect private insurance as much as they could. Here, John McClaughry of Vermont's Ethan Allen Institute explains what Romney fought for instead of the mandate.
Feb '11
Re: Can You Support Romney Without Supporting Romneycare?
Duane Oyen: .....
The 2006 Massachusetts legislative Dem advantage was Senate 34-6, house 139-21. A strong constituency was pushing "single payer" health care, because the state had almost $400 million in expiring Medicaid funds, out of $1 billion total cost, that had to either be applied or forfeited. This was the golden opportunity to create the Massachusetts Canadian health care model.
Romney had two choices- sit it out and let the government system bill pass, or dig in and try to cobble together a coalition in favor of a private market approach. Because of the combination of the Medicaid cash and the heavy legislature imbalance, there was no "do nothing" alternative.
.....
Yes, but that's not how Romney paints it. He's proud of what Massachusetts did; if Romney had come out with something to the effect of your post right from the beginning instead of saying how proud he is of the whole less-than-it-otherwise-would-have-been disaster, then maybe people like me wouldn't be skeptical today.