As the Maine primary and CPAC straw poll have again
pushed Mitt Romney into the front of the pack, Rick Santorum
continues to focus on Romneycare and its
apparent similarities to Obamacare, as he and Newt Gingrich
promised to do after Romney’s win in Florida.
But are the similarities all that Governor Romney’s
opponents portend?
I don’t love Romneycare but it is worth noting a few
things about it before the real battle begins in earnest —
again. Former statements from Obama on healthcare
demonstrate that the two healthcare plans, while similar in
some ways, present vast differences
in the essential origins and motives that
separate Barack Obama and Mitt Romney from their
infamous healthcare plans.
First of all, when Romney took on the uninsured in
Massachusetts, working with both parties in Boston, he did so with
the blessing of the Heritage Foundation. The idea was,
essentially, people who were getting a free ride with respect to
their healthcare would now have to pay. No more getting
healthcare for free. This time you had to pony up some cash or buy
insurance from a private carrier. The Heritage Foundation,
a longstanding bastion of Conservatism, thought it bold,
conservative thinking as they helped to craft its
design.
From a Heritage Foundation article
on Romney’s plan in 2006:
… to allow people to go without health insurance, and then when
they do fall ill expect someone else to pay the tab for their
treatment is a de facto mandate on providers and taxpayers. Romney
proposes to take that option off the table, leaving only two
choices: Either buy insurance or pay for your own care. Not an
unreasonable position, and one that is clearly consistent with
conservative values.
Like it or don’t like it, this idea, currently known as
Romneycare, was the brainchild of Conservatism. Of personal
responsibility. In 2006, long before Barack Obama had even thrown
his hat into the presidential ring, the Massachusetts answer was
“clearly consistent with conservative values” in its requiring
recipients of healthcare to pay for a service that they would
otherwise have received for free — rather, on the backs of
Massachusetts taxpayers. Newt Gingrich
supported its “tremendous
potential” and “real solutions” —
Gingrinchian praise for “creating a sustainable
health system” in Massachusetts.
But that is not the most significant aspect of this
Romneycare vs. Obamacare battle: Newt’s praise and
Conservative origins.
The most significant aspect of this war of words stems
from a common logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter
hoc, which suggests that if event O follows event R,
event R must have caused event O. In the
present case, event R would be Romneycare and event O would be
Obamacare. Romneycare, they say, brought about Obamacare.
Or, said another way, Obamacare came from Romneycare (first
fallacy), so it must be just like Romneycare (second
fallacy).
Before we get too lost in the weeds, it might be
interesting to see what Romney’s and Obama’s
original goals were.
As stated by Romney back then, “you will be free to choose
but your choices will have consequences.” Buy insurance or pay for
your healthcare. Romney’s goal was finite and simple:
to require the few who were sapping the Massachusetts’
taxpayers to ultimately pay for healthcare either by paying
the state or by paying an insurance provider. These people who had
no health insurance — fewer than 10% in Massachusetts —
would now have to contribute if they wanted healthcare. That was
it. Insurance companies were not nationalized. Massachusetts did
not become the default healthcare provider in that state. It is not
what I would have done, but it was seen as bold and it was the
kind of “outside the box” thinking that many from both Parties
admired. Newt included.
So, back to the goals or the intentions of Obama and
Romney. We know what Romney’s goal was. His goal was to involve the
private sector of Massachusetts in insuring a small percentage of
the Massachusetts’ healthcare pie.
Obama’s goal prior to signing Obamacare into law
was much, much bigger.
In
2003, he said, “I happen to be a
proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.” From that
speech:
I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest
country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its
gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health
insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when
he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan,
a universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as
all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first
we’ve got to take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the
Senate, and we’ve got to take back the House.
But more recently Obama
said:
I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter
because, frankly, we historically have had a employer-based system
in this country with private insurers, and for us to transition to
a system like that I believe would be too disruptive.
I think he meant what he said earlier and he meant what he said
later. It just depends on what the meaning of “system like that”
and a value on just how disruptive is “too disruptive.” I
won’t attempt to parse his words. The proof is in the Affordable
Healthcare Act. It has disrupted and it will continue to disrupt.
“That system” is exactly what we got. And “that system” will, if
left unchecked, get us what he wanted in 2003 — a system with just
the right amount of “disruptive.”
The fact is, Obamacare was originally going to be
single payer. It was going to be European — as close to it as
Congress would allow. But that was curbed. What they got, instead
— what we got, instead — was the first step. Obamacare.
The first step toward single-payer, universal healthcare coverage.
That’s a lot bigger than just under 10%, and it is a heckuva
lot more disruptive.
And that is the crucial difference. Romney never
said, never touted, never promised that “we may not get
[single-payer] immediately” or even a little later than
immediately. Much of the criticism against Romneycare is
deserved, as is the scrutiny. But Romneycare is not
Obamacare because Obamacare is just getting started.
One was an end in and of itself. The other is (still)
a means to an end.
