After Supporting Health Care Mandate In 1994, Santorum Now Says He Never Supported Mandates
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R) stepped up his criticism of GOP presidential primary front-runner Mitt Romney on CBS’ Face The Nation this morning, slamming Romney for providing “the basis” for the Affordable Care Act when he signed a comprehensive health reform law while he was governor of Massachusetts.
In addition to providing a model for national health care reform, RomneyCare is to blame for raising taxes, rising health care costs, and, worst of all, Santorum said, an individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance. That, Santorum said, represented a government intrusion into health care that he never has and never could support:
SANTORUM: Gov. Romney’s plan, as much as he’d like to say it’s not, was the basis of Obamacare. He was for an individual mandate, he was for government top-down control of the health care system in Massachusetts. And it’s led to the highest cost health care in the nation in Massachusetts, it’s led to higher taxes. … It is an absolute disaster. […]
He would not have the clear record that I have…of being for government out of the health care business, being for a plan that is bottom-up, private sector health care reform. Unlike other folks in this race, I’ve had a consistent record over that time of not being for individual mandates. … He has been for individual mandates, I have not.
Watch it:
As Igor Volsky reported last week, however, Santorum supported an individual health insurance mandate during his 1994 Senate campaign, shortly after a host of Senate Republicans had offered the mandate as an alternative to President Clinton’s health reform plan.
And aside from the fact that RomneyCare did lay the groundwork for the Affordable Care Act — Romney repeatedly touted his plan as a national model before the ACA passed — Santorum’s criticisms are largely off-base. Massachusetts’ health costs are rising, but at rates comparable to the national average, and the cost of some premiums has fallen dramatically. Meanwhile, the state has the lowest uninsured rate in the nation, with just 4.7 percent of Bay Staters lacking health insurance.
By: Travis Waldron, Think Progress, January 15, 2012
The Republican Alternative To “ObamaCare” Is ObamaCare
On Saturday, David Fahrenthold wrote that “more than a year after Republicans first pledged to ‘repeal and replace’ President Obama’s new health-care law, the GOP is still struggling to answer a basic question. Replace it . . . with what?”
This shouldn’t be such a problem. Health care is a big issue. It’s been around a long time. The Republican Party should, in 2011, have a position on it. To understand why it doesn’t, it’s worth reading Newt Gingrich’s April 2006 comments on then-Gov. Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts reforms.
“The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts,” wrote Gingrich, or someone speaking for Gingrich, in his “Newt Notes” newsletter. “The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system. We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans. … Individuals who can afford to purchase health insurance and simply choose not to place an unnecessary burden on a system that is on the verge of collapse; these free-riders undermine the entire health system by placing the onus of responsibility on taxpayers.”
In 2006, in other words, the Republican Party had an alternative to Obamacare. The only problem? It was Obamacare.
Between 1990 and 2007, the reigning Republican theory of health-care reform was that instead of handing the health-care system over to the government, they would put private insurers and personal responsibility at the core of their health-care reforms. During this period, everyone from Bob Dole to Jim DeMint to the Heritage Foundation endorsed this approach. But then Democrats, looking for a compromise, endorsed those same plans. And then Republicans, rather than pocketing the policy win, ran from their own ideas.
But insofar as the Republican Party had a plan for health-care reform, the individual mandate was it. That’s why Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman either passed, endorsed, or expressed openness to an individual mandate. And that’s why Romney hasn’t paid for his plan: Almost every other serious candidate for the Republican nomination supported an individual mandate, too. It’s hard for Gingrich to take a clear shot at Romney for proposing what Gingrich called “the most exciting development” in health-care reform.
It’s also why the Republican Party can’t figure out an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act was their alternative. Now they need an alternative to the alternative. But there are only so many policy approaches that make sense as an answer to our health-care problems. And Republicans have pretty much run out of them.
By: Ezra Klein, The Washington Post, December 27, 2011
The Problem Isn’t Mitt Romney’s $10,000 Bet Offer. It’s His Serial Dishonesty
One of the biggest pieces of news out of Saturday’s debate is that Mitt Romney offered to bet Rick Perry $10,000 over the latter’s claim that Romney wrote in his book that he viewed the individual mandate as a “model” for the country. Dems and Republicans alike are pouncing on the casual offer of a large wager as proof that Romney is out of touch, and reporters are predicting that this moment could crystallize a national media narrative about Romney.
But while the $10,000 moment is politically problematic and revealing in some ways, it doesn’t really deserve to rise to the level of national narrative. What’s more deserving of a national storyline about Romney is his serial dishonesty, his willingness to say and do anything to win.
This morning, Romney is pushing back on the idea that there was anything amiss about the $10,000 bet offer, arguing that he picked an “outrageous” sum to highlight just how “outrageous” Perry’s claim was. But Perry’s claim — while not completely accurate — wasn’t all that outrageous.
Perry argued that Romney wrote that the individual mandate he passed as governor of Massachusetts “should be the model for the country.” It’s true, as PolitiFact points out, that Romney’s book did also say that such reforms should be implemented at the state level. But Romney has in fact talked about the mandate as a national model: In 2007, he said he hoped that “most” states would adopt it, and added that he hopes to see “a nation that’s taken a mandate approach.” Romney is now trying to obscure the fact that he plainly saw his chief accomplishment as something that should ultimately be adopted on a national, or quasi-national, scale.
More broadly, political reporters and commentators are always tempted to seize on such moments as the $10,000 bet as defining of a candidate’s character. But this moment is ultimately almost as trivial as was John Edwards’ $400 haircut. More important is the broader pattern of dissembling and dishonesty that only begins with his equivocations over the mandate. To wit: Romney attacked Newt Gingrich for opposing mass deportation of longtime illegal residents without saying whether he supports such deportation. Romney continues to insist Obama apologized for America, even though this has been repeatedly proven flatly false. Romney released an ad ripping Obama’s quotes out of context in a highly dishonest way — and the campaign later boasted about the media attention the dishonesty secured. Romney falsely asserted that Obama is “bowing to foreign dictators” — then his campaign later insisted the claim was “metaphorical.” And so on.
This broader pattern is what deserves the status of national narrative about Romney’s character, not some throwaway line about a bet.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, The Line Plum, December 12, 2011
How The Affordable Care Act Incorporates Many Of Gingrich’s Health Care Proposals
Despite growing evidence — and video footage— that he has previously supported a national health insurance mandate, Newt Gingrich continues to characterize the Affordable Care Act as a government takeover of the health care system that he would repeal on his first day in office. But a closer look at Gingrich’s past health care proposals, his work at the Center for Health Transformation, and numerous books about health care reform, suggest that the law he seeks to repeal includes many aspects of his own health care philosophies and proposals.
As the table below demonstrates, the provisions included in President Obama’s health reform law are more progressive than Gingrich would have allowed, but they aim to expand coverage and lower health care costs in very similar ways:
| Newt Gingrich | Affordable Care Act | |
| Individual Mandate | “You ought to either have health insurance, or you ought to post a bond.” [Healthcare Cease Fire, 2005] | Section 1501: U.S. citizens and legal residents who don’t obtain coverage by 2014, pay a tax penalty. |
| Group Purchasing | “Large risk pools…should be established so low income people can buy insurance as inexpensively as large corporations.” [Winning The Future, 2005] | Section 1321: States establish health insurance exchanges to allow individuals, families, and small businesses to harness the purchasing power of large employers. |
| Subsidies | “Some aspect of the working poor has to involve transfer of finances. To ask people in the lowest paying jobs to bear the full burden of their health insurance is just irrational.” [Healthcare Cease Fire, 2005] | Section 1401: Families with incomes between 133-400% of the federal poverty line will receive premium credits to purchase insurance through the Exchanges. |
| Comparative Effectiveness Research | “A health care system that is driven by robust comparative clinical evidence will save lives and money.” [NYT, 2008] | Section 6302: Establishes a non-profit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to identify research priorities and conduct research that compares the clinical effectiveness of medical treatments. |
| Improving Quality | “Don Berwick at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has worked for years to spread the word that the same systematic approach to quality control that has worked so well in manufacturing could create a dramatically safer, less expensive and more effective system of health and health care.” [Washington Post, 2000] | TITLE X: Improves health care quality through numerous provisions, including the innovation of payment reform models and rewarding providers who deliver quality care. |
| Prevention | “The 21st Century System of Health and Healthcare will partner with you first to prevent illness and then to care for you as a patient if you become ill.” [Saving Lives & Saving Money, 2006] | TITLE IV: Prevention services will be available without additional cost-sharing and the law establishes a Prevention and Public Health Fund. |
| Health Information Technology (HIT) | “Going to a paperless all-electronic system is going to save lives, it’s going to save money, it’s going to lead to better outcomes, it’s going to give us new opportunities.” [Paper Kills, 2007] | The stimulus act invested in HIT and the ACA requires the government to develop standards “that facilitate electronic enrollment of individuals in Federal and State health and human services programs.” |
| Fraud | “First, we must dramatically reduce healthcare fraud within our current healthcare system.” [Stop Paying The Crooks, 2009] | The federal government has “more than tripled the amount of money it has recovered” in the past six years form fraud and the ACA includes numerous anti-fraud provisions from increasing the federal sentencing guidelines for health care fraud to appropriating an additional $350 million over 10 years to ramp up anti-fraud efforts. |
Inconvenient History: Proof Positive That Newt Gingrich Supported Healthcare Mandates
As Newt Gingrich takes his turn as the GOP flavor of the week, all that baggage he carries is beginning to be opened, unpacked and examined like a tourist going through customs on a slow day at the airport.
The past few days have shined a light on Newt’s relationship with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the quasi-governmental agencies that Gingrich has been hammering for their role in the nation’s mortgage meltdown. Yet, it turns out that Gingrich’s consulting firm accepted a sum well in excess of one million dollars from these same agencies to push their agenda with his Republican buddies on the Hill.
Now, the media is getting around to examining Gingrich’s record on healthcare reform and are finding themselves shocked to learn that, as Governor Romney accused during one the recent if endless GOP debates, Newt was a big supporter of mandated health insurance long before he was against it.
Anybody who is similarly surprised by this has simply not been paying attention. As I wrote in a Forbes piece back in May of this year, there is a fairly endless record of Gingrich’s commitment to health insurance mandates.
Newt’s explanation for his now inconvenient history is that he only adopted his pro-mandate position in the early 90’s for the purpose of derailing Hillarycare (the failed Clinton administration effort to reform our health care system.)
And yet, he has left a long trail of mandate laden bread crumbs that clearly proves otherwise.
Appearing earlier this year on Meet The Press, Gingrich stood up for his long-held position that mandates were a good idea. However, upon realizing that his statements were causing him big problems with the Republican base, Gingrich recorded and released a video just a few days later wherein he announced:
I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals. I fought it for two and half years at the Center for Health Transformation. I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional.
Not only did Newt flip-flop on his position, he outright lied when he said that he has fought the notion of mandates at his Center for Health Transformation.
How do we know he is lying?
Just click on the link and you can visit the Insure All Americans section at Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation website. Of course, should you take a little trip over to this smoking gun today, you will find that the relevant page has been removed. Go figure.
Fortunately, David Corn of Mother Jones and MSNBC, along with the Washington Post, got there before the page was taken down. As a result, courtesy of Corn, we have the screen image of the relevant proposal. You will want to note the highlighted section.
This, my friends, is unarguably a proposal that includes a health insurance mandate. And it gets even more interesting. According to the Washington Post article referenced above, Newt’s healthcare think tank raked in some $37 million from the healthcare industry by supporting the mandate concept.
Nice work if you can get it but not particularly useful if you are going to run for president on a platform that completely trashes what you had previously supported.
Now, one could argue that Newt’s proposal is somehow different from Obamacare because Gingrich exempts those who earn less than $50,000 from having to purchase coverage.
But that argument would fail miserably. In Newt’s book “Real Change”, published in 2008, Gingrich repeated his proposal that those making over $50,000 be required to purchase health insurance. But he also noted that those who earn below that level should receive tax credits or government subsidies to assist them in acquiring health care insurance coverage.
Sound familiar? It should. The proposal is pretty much Obamacare on the nose.
If GOP primary voters are paying attention, this should close the door on poor old Newt. After all, what’s the use of running a cranky old guy for President when he spends most of his time engaging in hypocrisy on steroids and running away from previously held positions for which he was paid magnificently to pursue.
And if this is the kind of candidate you’re looking for, why not choose Governor Romney? A pretty masterful flip-flopper himself, at least Romney made his money the old fashion way – buying companies, stripping them down, putting thousands out of work, and then reselling the pieces for a giant profit.
This has got to be preferable to a man who got rich peddling his influence with his Republican colleagues in Congress to the highest bidder…doesn’t it?
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, November 18, 2011
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