-
Farewell to the Spectator
December 16, 2011 | 8 comments
-
Tentative Praise for Ryan’s New Bipartisan Medicare Plan
December 15, 2011 | 3 comments
-
The Day Ahead: Thursday, December 15
December 15, 2011 | 0 comments
-
Examiner for Romney, National Review Against Gingrich
December 14, 2011 | 39 comments
-
Paul Ryan to Introduce New Medicare Plan with Democrat Ron Wyden
December 14, 2011 | 4 comments
The Spectacle Blog
I can’t help thinking that there might be an easy way for Mitt Romney to alleviate, if not entirely solve, his health care problem.
Rep. Paul Ryan has introduced a health care reform package to replace Obamacare in the case that a Republican wins in 2012. Ryan’s plan is a variation on a free-market model that’s been floating around policy circles for over a decade; it looks a lot like John McCain’s 2008 campaign proposal. The idea is to replace the tax preference for employer-provided health insurance with a universal refundable tax credit for private health insurance. There are many possible criticisms of such a plan, but that it resembles Obamacare too closely would not be one of them.
When Ryan came up with the “Roadmap” reform for Medicare and the budget, it didn’t go very far at first. Eventually, however, it became expected that conservatives would support it, and ultimately congressional Republicans united behind it. Romney himself said that he would sign a bill implementing the Ryan plan if he were president, although he hedged by saying he would come up with his own plan.
So why doesn’t Romney simply endorse Ryan’s replacement for Obama’s health care law?
It would certainly answer a lot of questions about Romney’s attitude toward Obamacare. And instead of being associated with a relatively liberal health care model, he would get a head start on what will likely be one of the next big conservative policy ideas.
There would be nothing inconsistent about Romney supporting Ryan’s approach while still defending his own law in Massachusetts: as he’s said a thousand times, his reform was a state solution for a state problem, and not necessarily a model for what he would do on the national level. There’s nothing in Ryancare that a supporter of Romney necessarily would find objectionable. And it’s a fairly mainstream Republican approach, as the McCain campaign showed, so Romney wouldn’t be taking too much of a risk.
Again, Romney wouldn’t eliminate all his problems on the issue of health care by embracing Ryan’s plan. For one thing, in the general election, Obama would still be able to point out the similarities between Romneycare and his own law, blunting Republican criticisms of Obamacare. But it could only help reassure primary voters suspicious of Romney’s health care message.
View all comments (11) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/09/30/a-quick-fix-for-romneys-health
Follow us:
ADVERTISEMENT
Current Issue
- What’s in a Name?
- Public Nuisances
- Ailes: A Voice for the Silent Majority
SPONSORED LINKS
FLASHBACK TO: 1995
-
Pope Culture
A man of faith in a godless age is hitting Americans where it hurts.
-
Why the GOP Does Not, Like, Totally Suck
Mr. and Mrs. American Spectator Reader, let P.J. O’Rourke talk sense to your kids.
-
Dames at Sea
-
In the Absence of Guns
In Britain, defending your property can get you life.
-
The Metaphysical Martini
-
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
The debacle of this president’s administration is both a cause and a symptom of the decline of American values. Unless Congress impeaches him, that decline will go on unchecked. An eminent jurist surveys the damage and assesses the chances for the recovery of our culture.
-
Chuck McHagel
It won’t take long for conservatives to scratch this presidential wannabe off their 2008 scorecard.
-
The Legacy of Old John and Mother Fresh-Roasted
-
It’s the Best Time of the Year
The American Christmas, like the songs that celebrate it, makes room for everybody under the rainbow. Is that why so many people seem to be hostile to it?
-
The Bush Crack-Up
Was the President done in by the economy, or by the politics of the economy?
Clip of the Day
H/T to National Review Online
ADVERTISEMENT
9thID| 9.30.11 @ 5:00PM
Nice try guy, but Socialism at any level is still Socialism. God help us...
Greg| 9.30.11 @ 5:07PM
There is nothing conservative about the Ryan plan: it's a merely less obnoxious ObamaCare. The going assumption with the Ryan plan is that we all get a tax credit if we do what the Fed command us to do: i.e., but an insurance policy.
Michele Bachmann has it right on this front: we must stop buying into the notion that we are lucky that the Government allows us to keep our money. What is to stop Paul Ryan from taxing our income at the 100% level, and then returning it to us in dribs and drabs if we do what he wants us to do on any given issue of the day? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing.
Quartermaster| 9.30.11 @ 6:55PM
Ryan is a moderately liberal northern Republican, and what he is pushing is just poison at a lower, but still lethal, dose.
john dubose| 9.30.11 @ 10:09PM
When Romney approved the Mass. health insurance plan, he was simply playing the practical politician. If he had rejected it, the Democratic legislature would likely have jammed through something worse.
Romney is indeed a bit squishy. Republicans need to make a judgement call about whether it is necessary to nominate him in order to win the presidency.
Fact is, that is a very close call given the multiple moods of the electorate and the unknowns of the personal attacks that will be aimed at the nominee.
sjccoach| 9.30.11 @ 11:29PM
You establishment CINOS want the Republicans to nominate a RINO like Romney. That was done in the last presidential election and RINO McCain lost big time. If Romney is nominated he will lose the election to Obama. Nothing will change if a RINO is elected. Romney was wrong about the health plan in Massachussetts. There is nothing Romney can say to make a wrong into a right. Romney is and was a RINO that will reach across the aisle to the Democrats. Romney is a tax collector for the welfare state at best and Obama lite at worst.
The Federal Farmer| 10.1.11 @ 7:34AM
Ryan has never worked a real job. Romney isn't self made. Both men pander. Both men treat their oath of office with little imperative.
After all, who could believe for a moment that the Constitution authorizes any power over health care. So exactly what does it mean to be a conservative now? I used to think it meant to hold the line in the place where the last liberal moved it. For Romney, however, he went one step further when he quoted Keynes about changing one's mind when the facts change. That is not a conservative mantra.
Reminds me of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all."
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 10.1.11 @ 9:12AM
Central economic planning will never work for the public. It only looks good for the political class when politicians "solve" problems only to find out that the solution was worse then the original problem.
The plan is then disavowed and new plans are hatched which then cause more destruction than the original political plans.
It's a lesson learned and forgotten time and again.
Boston12GS| 10.1.11 @ 9:14PM
"When Romney approved the Mass. health insurance plan, he was simply playing the practical politician. If he had rejected it, the Democratic legislature would likely have jammed through something worse."
This is a defense? Seriously?
Clearly Romney believes that the solution to the health care crises is ever increasing governmental control. Anybody who believes that such an approach has ever worked for anything should go ahead and vote for him, the tsunami of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
You can't fix stupid, and its pointless to try.
Clint| 10.2.11 @ 5:02PM
"Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, singled out Romney's Massachusetts health care plan as a primary reason why the national front-runner for the Republican nomination "clearly has difficulties" with members of the movement.
"He's attached to RomneyCare and has done a poor job of distancing himself from that," Meckler told reporters at a breakfast in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "I think he probably squandered an incredible opportunity and was probably the best guy to say, ‘I tried this and it failed,' and he has not done a good job of that. So he has taken positions that are contrary to what the average Tea Partier would take -- positions on man-made global warming, positions on energy efficiency. So I think he's in real trouble with the Tea Party base."
yisong| 10.25.11 @ 8:46PM
Slewing bearing is also called slewing bearing, some people called: rotary support, swing support.