Romney Hints At Radical Health Care Reform Plan To Replace ‘Obamacare’

[highplainsdem]

Source: TPM

Likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney doesn’t like to talk about the key details of his own plan for reforming the country’s health care system — the plan he’d push as a replacement to “Obamacare.”

But if you string together what he has said publicly, you arrive at a plan that would be far more disruptive to the existing health care system than “Obamacare” would be if fully implemented.

-snip-

The fact that the government excludes employer-sponsored insurance from taxation is the reason most people get their insurance through their workplaces. Companies are also able, unlike most individuals, to pool risk, so that sick as well as healthy people can be covered without distorting premiums for everybody. The result is a mix of perverse incentives that keep people tied down to jobs they don’t like, and leave self-employed people and many others to fight it out in the under-regulated individual market, where insurers can deny people coverage based on their pre-existing medical conditions, rescind coverage from individuals who get sick and skew premiums based on everything from age to geography.

-snip-

Romney, by contrast, suggests he would eliminate this tax exclusion, leading employers to drop benefits, and leaving workers to buy insurance on their own with tax credits. Analyses of McCain’s similar plan in 2008 suggest it would cause the number of uninsured Americans to spike by millions.

-snip-

Read more: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/romney-hints-at-radical-health-care-reform-plan-to-replace-obamacare.php

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Let's see Romney is going to reuse Bush's economic plan and reuse McCain's

healthcare 'reform' plan. The guy's just full of new 'ideas', isn't he?

[HughBeaumont]

2. GiftTastic in words AND actions.

On one side - sure you'll get insurance, but we're jacking up your co-pays and deductibles. After all, we're not in BUSINESS for our health, much less yours.

On the other side - Hope you got a money tree, because you're going to need it!!. And don't you DARE ask us productive people to even accept one dollar LESS, fuckers.

What a high bar we set for the US, no?

[flamingdem]

3. Can't wait until seniors have coupons for cancer

woo hoo

[mac56]

4. "Coupons For Cancer"

That's brilliant. I'm writing that one down for future use.

[woodsprite]

10. Sounds like a good name for Romney's proposed plan. n/t

[begin_within]

5. What's his plan? Everyone pays in cash at full price for every service?

[DaveJ]

7. Yeah, just like food and housing

So if your poor you get the worst healthcare. Social Darwinism.

[frazzled]

6. This is so incredibly unpopular I'm surprised he's trying it again

The vast majority of people receive their health insurance through their jobs, and the vast majority of those are satisfied with their insurance and suspicious of changing it. (Even though in recent years I suspect that satisfaction has decreased as deductibles and copays have risen under many of these plans). That has been proven time and again, and is the main reason Congress has never really made the push for single payer, government-sponsored insurance. We've only made the first steps at moving toward it with the ACA.

Everybody knows somebody who has had to buy insurance on their own. Everybody knows somebody who has been turned down for slightly elevated blood pressure or an episode of depression thirty years earlier or (honestly, this happened to a friend of mine) a finger injury. Everybody has heard the premiums. Nobody wants a voucher for buying their own if they are currently getting a decent policy via their employer, where everyone gets covered.

[SunSeeker]

8. As Grayson said, the GOP plan is for you to "die quickly." nt

[Lasher]

9. How ironic.

How is he going to condemn Obamacare without apologizing for Romneycare?