Abandoning the sensible position he used to hold, Mitt Romney now believes the United States can provide health care to 50 million uninsured Americans through emergency rooms. By every relevant metric -- medical, economic, moral, fiscal -- this approach is ridiculous, and it didn't take long for the Obama campaign to unveil this new video on the subject.
I'm glad to see the issue get some attention, because it gets to the heart of the larger debate over the American health care system. Democrats believe it's in the nation's interest to provide coverage for the tens of millions of Americans who lack access to basic care; Republicans believe emergency rooms are enough.
Those who understand the system realize Romney's approach is untenable. The American College of Emergency Physicians President David Seaberg issued a statement yesterday reminding the nation that "emergency care is not health insurance." The Urban Institute's Stan Dorn, who has done extensive research on the uninsured, told Greg Sargent that Romney's position is "shocking."
Indeed, to follow up on yesterday's item on this, it's worth appreciating the scope of the damage Romney's policy would do. Jonathan Cohn explained yesterday:
Remember, Romney doesn’t simply want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, effectively taking health insurance away from 30 million people who, starting in 2014, are likely to get it from the law. He also wants to end Medicaid, making cuts that would leave between 14 and 27 million additional people without insurance. And he wants to change the tax treatment of employer health benefits, in ways that could make coverage more expensive or harder to get.
This matters because under this Romney model, it means more uninsured, which means more Americans relying on hyper-expensive emergency room care during crises, which means less-effective treatment than preventive care. It also, of course, means more families bankrupted by medical bills and more costs passed on to everyone else.
In Massachusetts, Romney understood this. It's a shame he's regressed as a national candidate.
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This is his "sold my soul" moment. There is literally no way to ever respect a single thing he ever says from this point on. Romney has insulted my intelligence so often that these things usually bounce off, but this time the liar has gone too far.
Mitt Romney has now stooped even lower than even I thought was possible.
In a pathetic and transparant strategy to try and act out "the image of displaying an air of confidence" that the states have the whole problem of uninsured Americans "well structured and contained", so as not to have any "real measurable impact on the economy, quality of care, or moral responsibility of a civilized nation, he only demonstrated where his "true confidence" in winning the election lies. And that's in his confidence that the popular vote can be swung in his favor by fooling a nation of idiots and those who wish to eploit them.
Lebowsky Dude , exactly
I would add the entire gop also , I have been shocked at how they imagine they can talk down to people and get away with it nation wide , their voters have the same blinders on , the gop I know will tell you with a straight face hard working people who get sick and lose everything are getting just what they deserve , they defend snake oil salesmen over common sense every time , until it effects THEM personally of course , or it is time for obama care to benefit them , then they pretend it never happened
I am done with the lot of them , or even imagining trying to negotiate with the shysters
Infant mortality rates in the US have risen over the past 12 years, while average life-expectancy in the US has dropped over the last 30 years. Emergency rooms are not the solution.
" Romney's approach is untenable."
This has ALSO been the official government approach to 'healthcare' for decades! And, yes, it is 'untenable'.
Re-elect Obama, and give the ACA a chance. (Maybe in 2016 Hillary can get us Single Payer!)
How can anyone think that he is a serious candidate for presidency? No matter how you feel about Obama & his policies, it seems clear to me that Romney is just a lost cause for Republicans and they should just cut their losses and focus on 2016.
That is waiting for an ad
Got Diabetes - Hit the emergency room
Got Cancer -Hit the emergency room
Got MS - Hit the emergency room
They won't be happy until the poor are dying in a Dickensian nightmare
Sick-n-tired- You hit the nail on the head. The ER provision doesn't cover insulin injections or blood sugar monitoring.
The ER provision doesn't cover scheduled chemotherapy.
The ER provision doesn't cover doesn't pay for interferon treatment, physical therapy or medical equipment like electric wheelchairs.
The ER provision as primary mechanism for the uninsured means more people die or get sicker than they needed to. Period.
As Allen Grayson said "the GOP plan is to get sick, die quickly" - and they had the nerve to try and pillory him for telling the truth! SMH!
Recall the GOP debates on this very issue? Romney's position is an improvement of the sense the audience had; they didn't want to even admit the uninsured to the ER. Let the uncovered die?
Wonderful bunch.
VOTE THEM ALL OUT ....
Republicans care ONLY about the wealthy
I would love to see someone put some numbers on this. I used a made up example to explain this to my ultra-conservative military brother so he would understand but to see some real analysis would be great on a human level. My example was an elderly man with heart problems, where it could be $10,000/year for preventative care, or $100,000/year for someone who had a heart attack and still couldn't afford continuing care. If the cost will come back to taxpayers, which would you rather pay - more or less?
I stopped looking for any sense of coherence in Governor Romney's policies long ago, especially on the subject of healthcare. I think at this point he thinks that if he just takes every position on every issue, it'll confuse the populace so much that their brains will shut down and they'll just vote for him accidentally.
That is working with the msm so far , but I am rather shocked by the fact that certain out lets are calling the gop on at least some their BS
I would humbly submit a temporary fix for those without health insurance. Put it on Mitt's personal tab. It would give him a chance to have a compassionate though distant interaction with the little people he chooses to ignore.
While I'd like to believe that Rawmoney is echoing the sentiments of "his base", I also think it goes to the deeper problem within society. When did we as a nation become so selfish and addicted to individualism that we're willing to see "others" thrown under the bus of greed? Before the ACA millions of children were thrown off of their parents insurance after 18 or 21 if they were lucky, there were "death panels" if you were sick and your coverage exceeded whatever the limit your insurance company decided, there were those that could not obtain coverage due to "pre-existing conditions" - at what point do WE acknowledge that some things are not best left to the "private sector"?
We have an explosion of cancers/diabetes/health issues - and one day we're going to recognize that all of this hormone laden, GMO food is the cause of most of our ills, literally! WE all pay when people are sick and show up at the emergency rooms; and quite frankly exactly what does that "Christian" crowd say - nothing or "let them die" - I'm sure that it's not in line with the message from that carpenter from Nazareth!
The Romney theme for government seems to be " if it's broken, don't fix it" - there seems to be no evaluation or consideration whatsoever how that affects "we the people" that end up bearing the actual costs, both economically and emotionally.
As to the soccer analogy, I'm thinking more pinball. Listened to The Who the other day and with a few word changes, can't get Pinball Wizard out of my mind when I think of Romney:
Ever since he was a young boy,
He's played the silver ball.
From Utah down to Boston
He must have played them all.
But I ain't seen nothing like him
In any government hall
That rich dumb and vile Mitt
Sure plays a mean pin ball!
Coreless.
"Can't afford insurance? No problem - just tough it out until you lose consciousness, then we'll come pick you up. It'll be great."
Hopefully what the Romney Team and moderate conservatives will realize is you cannot pander to the tea party and their endorsements as there is too much of a gap between where they would have you govern and where reality and the rest of the country would have you govern. Their narrow minded extreme views need to be marginalized by their majority once again. Romney's unwillingness to stand up to these guys put him in this corner looking like a fool and hopefully costing him the presidency. You almost gotta feel sorry for the guy...On second thought, no you don't.
I wrote about what it's like to be part of the working poor on my blog. I left out untreated mental illness for some reason. Anyway, this is what it's like when you're forced to use an emergency room for treatment: http://atheistreadsbible.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-its-like-to-be-working-poor.html
Romney is incapable of understanding what the rest of us live with everyday. Had he been poor, or even one of those living on the edge when his wife got sick, she would never have gotten the care she did because of his deep pockets. She got a dancing horse to help her rehab. Without insurance she could not have even gotten a physical therapist.
Here's what happens to the rest of us.
My brother worked hard all his life, as a carpenter/builder and even though he made a decent wage when there was work, he was, like many of us, just holding on to the middle class. But, at least he had great insurance through the union.
Then he got lung cancer. His insurance covered some very expensive chemo initially, but when you get that kind of sick, eventually you can't work, so you'd better have a massive savings account. He didn't, so he redid his mortgage but eventually had to go on disability anyway. There is a couple year waiting period to be covered by medicare when you get disability from Social Security, so when his money finally ran out and he could no longer pay the $600 per month premiums for his private insurance, he was still three months away from being covered by medicare. For those three months he received no chemo and no treatment at all for his disease, because only people like Mitt Romney could afford the thousands of dollars each treatment costs without insurance.
He died in February. Now, could he have lived longer had he not missed that chemo treatment? Who knows.... and I have my own ideas about chemo and how well it works. But, inherent in our health system today is a remarkable amount of inequality in the value of a persons life. Simply, his life was worth less than Ann Romeny's.
And, his value had nothing whatsoever to do with whether he was a great guy who always gave more than he took or even whether he contributed something grand to the world around him. He just didn't have enough money to live.
Wonder what will be enough in the future? With rising health costs will we all someday fall behind as we get sick and use up savings, mortgages and retirement funds to pay to live? Will only the very rich be able to live in the future because only they can afford a heart bypass or chemo?
These are the true "death panels". The value of your life is directly related to how much money you have. We'd better start teaching our children that life is not about finding a profession you love or doing what you are good at or even trying to save the world. Your life is about money and only money because that's what you'll need in the future just to survive in America's capitalist health care system.
Lets add what romney and the gop say about your brother to send the message home ,,,,, " he was nothing but a mooch dependent on gov " ,,,,, which is a disgusting lie ...But they will not say that to our faces , they color coat it and water it down , and say it behind closed door's when they think no one is listening , it is jim crow for anyone who does not think like rush limbaugh
I work in an emergency room as a social worker, and this would be a train wreck. My day is spent by trying to help people find resources that aren't available in the community because there is no funding for it. I help those that don't have insurance at least 80% of the time, and if they do have insurance, it's typically Medicaid. These people continually come to us because they don't have access to coverage to help them see an ongoing physician for their medical problems, they cannot afford medications they need, and again can't linked with medication assistance programs with the drug companies due to lack of having a physician to sign off on their scripts.
We believe the emergency room is important for crisis/traumatic conditions and will happily help those without coverage get the care and the ongoing treatment they need. We don't believe that we need to change the publics mindframe that thinking a sniffly nose = a crisis because they don't have coverage. People coming in for something less than an emergency will increase wait times, increase agitation of those waiting and the staff, tempers will erupt, and people will quickly become desperate. I'd prefer not to get to desperation.
When you see older video of Romney saying, "if people can afford to pay for health care and they are not, then they should be required to buy health care," and now he says, "just go to the ER", what is a person to think?
How can you trust a person that has a decision making process like this?
...and he knows these videos are out there. Coreless (as someone above stated). His campaign is reliant on the idea that voters are idiots. It is pretty amazing that this is not a bigger scandal than it is.
No other way to say it; Mitt Romney is a flip-flopper extraordinaire, the Mother of all flip-floppers. And every Obama political ad should trumpet this fact - not an opinion - but this fact until the election.
"If someone has a heart attack, we don't let them sit in their apartment and die..."
I so wish he would have just gone ahead and said trailer or hovel, or perhaps lean-to.
Just another example of what he thinks of the 47%.
I can't imagine why he wouldn't same "their home". It's so strange that he would say "apartment"; I'm sure he has never lived in an apartment so what connection is he trying to make here? Perhaps he meant basement because evidently he's had a lot of experience of living in one of those.
It's a small thing but really confirms how detached he really is from how non-Romney's live our lives.
For sick-n-effin-tired : As the Soup Nazi says..."NO SOUP FOR YOU"!!!!!!...so just stick it Oliver, Tiny Tim, et al.!!!!
Hospitals lose millions each year when they have to treat uninsured patients, no matter how trivial their medical complaint may be. In order to have that "H" sign pointing their way, they must not refuse treatment to anyone in their ER.
I don't see how this solves the problem. Once again he talks without thinking through the subject and what he really thinks needs to be done. When he starts doing that he will have something for people to think about at the polls. In the richest country in the world we should all be able to save our own lives when we need medical care. What happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
What happened to these folks thinking socialism is wrong. If so then why should everyone have to pay in insurance premiums and high medical costs for everyone elses emergency room visits? Excuse me this is lopsided socialism. I can't go to an emergency room and get free care. I have insurance. I still can't afford it because of co-pays, deductables, and everything they will not cover at 100%.
It's a broken system and like the economy, going back to Republican philosophical means of government will not solve the problem they already caused with this thinking.
About a month back now, a couple of the dealers from the antique store I work for held a cookout, and conspicuously absent from it was our assistant manager. For, at the very last minute, just before six PM, he had a heart-related medical emergency and was rushed by his wife to a local hospital (where they pledge a short waiting time in their advertising.) Well after 11 PM, when members of the party checked with his wife via cell phone for a status update on his condition, she reported that they were still waiting to see a physician.
Myself, having lost my health insurance when the bank I worked for went under, I am now reliant on our local health clinic here. I am required to re-register with them once a year and show proof of need by providing a financial statement. I have gone there only when I can’t deal with the pain using over the counter medicines (over the last two years, I’ve sought help with them for my teeth, knees and a recurring neck and lower back problem resultant from a fall back when I was working,) and typically had to book an appointment weeks in advance, except for one time when the pain was so bad I did a drop-in; the wait for a cancelation and doctor visit was three and a half hours.
And right now, I consider myself lucky, in that I at least have a part time, no benefits, paid under the table job that provides a little money to slow the hemorrhaging of my bank account, and am in relatively good health. I see lots of people out on the streets here in Reno without even that.
I've only skimmed the comments, so far, but have seen no response from the AMA. Where do they stand on this...or have they stepped into the breach created by Romney? What about the nurses, interns, and other ER staff? This has to be the most ignorant message ever sent my a candidate for POTUS. As I said elsewhere, where was follow-up and pressure from Pelley on 60 Minutes? He and his like have surrendered to the corp. MSM.