Amidst the assorted personal attacks and lunar colonization strategies in last Thursday’s Florida debate, Rick Santorum made an actual substantive argument that had oddly been largely absent from the debates until then: That Mitt Romney would have trouble making the case against Obamacare because the Democrats will point to Obamacare’s resemblance in some important respects to the health-care reform Romney helped enact in Massachusetts while he was governor.
The repeal of Obamacare is among the most pressing domestic priorities for the next president (second only to reviving the economy), and is among the most potent political weapons for Republicans in the coming election. The Democrats will certainly try everything they can to neutralize the advantage, and they have already started making the case that Obamacare was just the same thing as Romneycare. Romney’s answer last week—which focused on the fact that Obamacare was a one-size-fits-all federal law—suggests he is not well prepared to deflect that argument and make a wholehearted case against Obamacare. In fact, more than anything his answer suggests that he has not internalized the real case against Obamacare, and for an actual reform of our system of health-care financing.
In the latest
NR, Ramesh and I have a piece (which is now up online
here) that tries to suggest what his answer should have been, and should be in the fall should he win the nomination. As we note, the very argument that Obamacare was based on a state solution (let alone the amazing fact that Obamacare’s own champions make that argument) is itself proof that Obamacare was not even intended (let alone well designed) to address the actual problems with our system—problems that are caused by a series of badly misguided federal policies (above all Medicare’s fee-for-service structure, Medicaid’s state-federal structure, and the distorting influence of the tax exemption for employer-provided coverage), and which the states must all live with. Romneycare was one (in our view ill-advised and unsuccessful) attempt to live with those problems. But whatever you think of it as a state solution, surely a federal solution would not simply live with our badly broken federal health-care architecture but would fix it instead.
Obamacare thoroughly fails to do that. It keeps Medicare unreformed and just doubles down on price controls through an unconstitutional rationing board, it keeps Medicaid unreformed and just vastly expands it, and it exacerbates the economic distortions in the employer and individual markets.
Romney (like every other Republican at this point) proposes to actually address each of these problems, a process that would have to begin with the repeal of Obamacare and then continue with reforms of Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax treatment of health insurance—all of which he has proposed. The fact that Obamacare’s champions argue in defense of the law that it was based on a state reform that (being a state law) literally couldn’t do anything about the causes of our health-care crisis is hardly an argument in defense of Obamacare, or much of an argument against Romney.
And it begins at the NR, Romeny Care really is a conservative solution to healthcare. With Ramesh and Levin leading the rewrite.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"It keeps Medicare unreformed"
Doesn't every law keep Medicare unreformed?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHaving read that story, I don't think it's an adequate response, sorry. For pete's sake, Romney has been giving much of that answer over the last few months. The only thing I haven't heard him say is that Obamacare is based on a state program that didn't work. And I can't imagine him ever admitting that kind of defeat for something he's been defending all this time.
We've got the wrong guy for a truly awful problem facing America. Romney is head of the White Elephant Party. Why can't you admit that? It's pretty obvious to us morons out here in Normalville. I'll vote for Romney and trust him to do the right thing for some things, but free market healthcare reform ain't one of them. I'm still not convinced Obamacare will be obliterated if he wins.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe unappeasable wing of the GOP is more intent on defeating Romney than they are in defeating Obama.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1) Since there's no way that Romney beats Obama, the two positions are not mutually exclusive.
2) Speaking of unappeasable, you guys who have been declaring that only Romney can win and all others must be destroyed fit that description much better.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Since there's no way that Romney beats Obama, the two positions are not mutually exclusive."
According to all available data Romney has the better chance of all available choices. So yours is a remark driven by personal antipathy, and not grounded on facts.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"In the latest NR, Ramesh and I have a piece (which is now up online here) that tries to suggest what his answer should have been"
In other words, "Hey Romney, try out this excuse for the inexcusable!"
No thanks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseA connection between Romneycare and Obamacare is both irrelevant and meaningless.
Obamacare is unconstitutional, Romneycare is not, any other point is moot. As long as the GOP continues to draw a line of equity between an unconstitutional Federal law, and a constitutional State action, they will set themselves up to lose.
Let the argument be settled at the Constitutionality of the two laws, instead of allowing Obama to legitimize an unconstitutional law by comparing it to an unconstitutional one.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf the courts don't find that Obamacare is unconstitutional, that will mean you favor keeping it? After all, the question of whether it is a good law or a bad law is, according to you, irrelevant.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Court has been wrong before, many times in fact. Kelso is the latest example of just how wrong a Court can be.
There is absolutely no question that the Federal government lacks the Constitutional power to mandate the people to engage in commerce. There is absolutely no question that the State of Massachusetts is not forbidden by the Constitution to regulate financial responsibility for health care costs within their own State.
If the Court wrongly finds that Obamacare's individual mandate is Constitutional, then it falls to Congress to overturn it, either way, Obama must be out of the office, and Congress must be populated with sufficient anti-mandate votes to put send legislation overturning Obamacare to a Republican President for a signature.
Lacking the votes in Congress, we need a Republican President willing to take Executive action to block implementation of the law.
Not being a resident of Mass, I have no voice in what the government of Mass does. Being a US citizen however, I have a voice in what the Federal government does, so yes, I want Obamacare overturned.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe argument that "had oddly been largely absent from the debates until then" has also, I am sure coincidentally, been absent from the writing of the NRO Obamaphiles from the beginning of the campaign.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, about the 500 pound electoral gorilla(s) living in Mr. Inevitable's back pocket.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse