No Apology, by Gov. Mitt Romney (R, MA): on Health Care
George W. Bush:
AIDS Relief: largest int'l health initiative in history
Our soft-power advantages should also be derived from our manifest generosity: Americans make up just 4.5 percent of the world's population, yet we donate 12 percent of global foreign aid, an amount almost twice as much as any other country. We provide
the most funds for humanitarian relief and global charities, and former president George W. Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is the largest international health initiative in history dedicated to fight a single disease.
Source: No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p. 76
Mar 2, 2010
Mitt Romney:
2006 lessons: involve everyone; demonize none; transparency
The debate over health care raged Washington during most of 2009. Sadly, that consensus as to the problem did not result in a consensus as to the solution. The real tragedy was that it wasn't the sort of bipartisan and genuine search for solutions that
I experienced in Massachusetts in 2006 and 2007. Our reforms in
Massachusetts didn't produce a perfect system, just one that was much better than what had been there before, and it taught us all valuable lessons on how to work collaboratively to reform health care. But the most important lessons--involve everyone,
demonize no one, and be transparent--were never adopted by President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid, and their surrogates. As a result, we have not achieved the kind of reforms that will tame health-care cost inflation.
Source: No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p.163
Mar 2, 2010
Mitt Romney:
People without insurance already receive care via E.R.
We had a collective epiphany: the people in Massachusetts who didn't have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care. Under federal law, hospitals had to treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. That
meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn't have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured BUY insurance instead--before acute conditions developed--the
cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared.Massachusetts insurance regulations also didn't help. The commonwealth required insurers to offer only benefit-rich policies--and consequently, such policies were very
expensive. Further, the state didn't allow insurers to adequately discount policy premiums for young healthy people. As a result, premiums for individuals who were not part of a pool were excessively high, & young healthy people declined to pay for them.
Source: No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p.171-172
Mar 2, 2010
Mitt Romney:
2006: Compromise with Ted Kennedy to make RomneyCare reality
The plan we ultimately constructed & proposed to the legislature relied on three basic components:- Those who could afford insurance would either buy it pay their own health-care costs--no more free riders showing up at the hospital expecting to ge
care at tax-payers' expense
- For those who couldn't afford health insurance on their own, the state would pay a portion of their premium with the amount of the subsidy determined on a sliding scale by income
- To make it easier to insurers to service
individual customers, the state would create a "connector" or "exchange" that would collect premiums and pass them on to the insurers.
Our first stop was the office of Ted Kennedy. He saw an opportunity to work on a bipartisan experiment that might
become a model for other states. He quickly grasped the structure of our program, and he agreed to support our approach. The bill wasn't perfect; nothing that groundbreaking could be. But it was a big improvement over what we had.
Source: No Apology, by Mitt Romney,p.173-5, Mass.Voting Record Ch.58
Mar 2, 2010
Ted Kennedy:
2006: Supported RomneyCare as model for other states
The plan we ultimately constructed & proposed to the legislature relied on three basic components:- Those who could afford insurance would either buy it pay their own health-care costs--no more free riders showing up at the hospital expecting to ge
care at tax-payers' expense
- For those who couldn't afford health insurance on their own, the state would pay a portion of their premium with the amount of the subsidy determined on a sliding scale by income
- To make it easier to insurers to service
individual customers, the state would create a "connector" or "exchange" that would collect premiums and pass them on to the insurers.
Our first stop was the office of Ted Kennedy. He saw an opportunity to work on a bipartisan experiment that might
become a model for other states. He quickly grasped the structure of our program, and he agreed to support our approach. The bill wasn't perfect; nothing that groundbreaking could be. But it was a big improvement over what we had.
Source: No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p.173-175
Mar 2, 2010
Tommy Thompson:
Proposed block grants to states for all of Medicaid
The Bush administration's then secretary of health and human services Tommy Thompson proposed a straightforward and uncomplicated plan to fix the Medicaid program. Appearing at the annual governors' conference, he proposed that each state annually be
given the Medicaid dollars it had received during the prior year, adjusted for inflation and changes in the state's population of the poor. The state would be allowed to fashion its health-care program for the poor as the state chose.
These distortions and inequities in Medicaid have become so severe that governors like me were willing to trade the federal government's open checkbook for the ability to control our own state's program. We were convinced that we could
save money and provide better care for more people who really needed it. Yet Congress rejected Thompson's plan. Since then, I haven't seen a better idea for fixing Medicaid come so close to becoming law.
Source: No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p.161-162
Mar 2, 2010
Page last updated: Feb 19, 2019