Romney made an appearance on Hannity
and Colmes. His demeanor was a little looser and his mood was
jovial than in some prior appearances and debates. A solid
performance. It is also clear he's sticking by his Massachusetts
health care plan. There was this exchange following guest host Bob
Beckel's claim that Romney had not been talking about his health
plan:
GOV. ROMNEY: You have not been going to my meetings. I talked
about health care plan every time. This is a way to get people
insured without expanding government programs. Without expanding
Medicaid and instead helping people to get private market based
insurance. It is one of the things I am most proud of. I hope I get
to debate Hillary Clinton.
BECKEL: Well I do follow closely... The one thing you to leak
out of your proposals is the part that I thought was courageous
which was that if you could not afford it, the state would pay for
it.
GOV. ROMNEY: The plan I put forward said that nobody got free
insurance. Everyone would pay what they could before. We have a
sliding scale based on your income and the state will help to pay a
portion of the premium cannot afford for the poor. The good news is
that it costs us less to help them buy their own private insurance
that was costing us giving up free care at hospitals. I do talk
about that. I will be giving a speech to the Florida medical
association describing our plan in some detail. I insisted that
everyone pays something. Our legislature overrode the idea and
people at the very low and got a free and I think that was a
mistake.
In this exchange you see the outlines of the debate on the GOP
side. Will voters recognize that Romney has done something others
have only talked about? Or will his plan strike GOP voters as too
much government and too much regulation of health care? Will be
interesting to watch.
topics:
Health Care, Hillary Clinton, Medicaid
