Angry At Komen? You Should Be Furious At Mitt Romney And The GOP
My email inbox has been flooded over the last three days with messages of outrage over Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s surprise metamorphosis into a purveyor of right-wing culture wars – a change that the organization is now frantically trying to undo. Americans have been shaken by the news of a formerly respected and loved organization with a trusted brand turning on many of the low-income women who it had previously taken pride in serving.
I too am angry at Komen’s decision to put right-wing ideology ahead of its purported public health mission. But our deeper anger should be directed at someone else: the Republicans in Congress and GOP leaders who consistently make the same choices involving many times more money, and many times more women’s lives. The shock of the revelation of Komen’s new policies only highlighted how numb many of us have become to the larger, unrelenting attacks on women’s health by right-wing elected officials.
The grants to Planned Parenthood that Komen would have severed totaled $680,000 over the last year – a total that the organization thankfully made up in two days from contributions that have poured in in response to the Komen betrayal. Let’s put that in perspective. Last year, the House GOP voted to zero out the entire $317,000,000 Title X family planning budget – including about $75 million that would have gone to Planned Parenthood’s preventative care and treatment programs for low-income women.
Deciding that this plan wasn’t disastrous enough, the House also passed an amendment to eliminate all federal funding to Planned Parenthood, an estimated total of $363 million, much of which goes to care for the Medicaid patients who make up almost half of Planned Parenthood’s clientele. The amount that Komen would have cut from Planned Parenthood’s women’s healthcare was significant– but the amount that House Republicans were prepared to cut was 500 times larger.
The right wing understands this. Anti-choice groups have rejoiced over the Komen decision, seeing it as a stepping stone to what has always been their ultimate goal: eliminating women’s reproductive rights and destroying Planned Parenthood along the way.
Those who value comprehensive women’s health care need to make the same connection. What Komen did was wrong. What the Republican Party tries to do every chance it gets is hundreds of times worse.
I doubt that Mitt Romney will dare to take a stand on the Komen controversy. But it doesn’t matter. We know where he is on this issue — and not just because we know how he feels about poor people. Last year, Romney supported the amendment that would have eliminated 500 times as much money from Planned Parenthood’s health care services, cutting off a million and half of its most needy patients. So did Newt Gingrich. So did every other major GOP presidential candidate. So did all but seven House Republicans.
The Komen decision was shocking to so many because, in part, we expect more integrity from a nonpartisan women’s health organization than we do from our politicians.
But the stakes from our politicians are bigger. Planned Parenthood provides critical services to millions of American women each year. In 2010, it provided nearly 750,000 breast exams and 770,000 Pap tests to women seeking critical cancer screening. It provided more than four million tests and treatments for STIs. It provided affordable contraception to low-income women, preventing an estimated 584,00 unintended pregnancies. Planned Parenthood estimates that one in five American women has received care from the organization in her lifetime.
Without Komen’s funding, Planned Parenthood would have rallied. Without federal funding, nearly half of its 3 million patients – including many from disadvantaged neighborhoods and rural areas – would lose their care.
Yes, we should be angry at Komen for the Cure. But, like the Right, we need to recognize that this is ultimately a symbolic fight in a much bigger battle.
Today, Komen gave in to the overwhelming response it received from Americans who value women’s health over partisan politics. Our elected officials should face just as much pressure. Take the email you sent to Komen and copy Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. They need to hear the same message, and face the same backlash, five hundred times over.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President-People for the American Way, Published in The Huffington Post, February 3, 2012
RomneyCare: Conservatives Attempt To Rescue Mitt From His Past
Now that Mitt Romney is well and truly inevitable, it is becoming imperative for conservatives to begin the arduous work of explaining why his Massachusetts health care plan is in no way similar to the evil, bureaucratic, freedom-destroying Obamacare monstrosity. Ann Coulter gives it a go, as do Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review.
The latter brush aside any purported similarities by quickly noting that “policy experts of various political stripes have claimed that Obamacare is essentially Romneycare taken national.” Right, one of those policy experts is Jonathan Gruber, the guy who designed Romney’s health care plan and then designed Obama’s. Let’s see what he has to say:
He credited Mitt Romney for not totally disavowing the Massachusetts bill during his presidential campaign, but said Romney’s attempt to distinguish between Obama’s bill and his own is disingenuous.
“The problem is there is no way to say that,” Gruber said. “Because they’re the same fucking bill. He just can’t have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it’s the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying.
Any attempt to explain why Romneycare is so vastly different than Obamacare really ought to explain why the economist who designed both plans thinks they’re the same fucking bill.
Coulter, Levin, and Ponnuru all defend Romney by arguing that he was operating within the constraints of a distorted federal system. “There’s not much governors can do about the collectivist mess Congress has made of health care in this country,” writes Coulter. But of course Obama was also operating within the confines of a distorted system, including many interest groups and voters deeply resistant to change.
Levin and Ponnuru urge Romney to vigorously press the argument that his plan has no resemblance to Obama’s. Their advice centers on the one area of difference:
So what, then, should Governor Romney say, if he is the nominee and President Obama suggests that his health-care plan is modeled on the one the Republican enacted? Something, we suggest, like the following:
“Nice try. Your health-care plan, Mr. President, spends a trillion dollars on yet another uncontrollable federal entitlement program and on a massive expansion of a failing Medicaid system. It has an unconstitutional rationing board cut hundreds of billions from Medicare without being answerable to the public, without giving seniors more options, and without using the money to shore up the program or reduce the deficit. It raises hundreds of billions in taxes on employment, investment, and medical research; and after all of that, it wouldn’t even reduce the growth of health-care costs, which is the heart of the problem. And your defense of all that is that it was based on a state program that doesn’t actually do any of those things?
But that is what Romney is already saying, right down to the “nice try.” And what it’s saying, basically, is that Obama was fiscally responsible. Romney, owing to a quirk of federal funding, was able to finance his plan with a windfall grant from Washington, meaning he didn’t need to come up with any painful cuts to cover his insurance expansions. Obama raised taxes and found inefficient spending within the Medicare system to finance covering the uninsured. And one of the biggest elements of his tax increase was a reduction in the tax deduction for expensive private plans – basically, the strongest version Obama could get through Congress of a staple idea urged by conservatives, which is to eliminate the tax code’s favoritism for employer-sponsored insurance.
Now, you could argue that this should go even further, and I’d agree. If you had Republicans willing to continue advocating the health care principles they used to advocate before Obama tried to implement them, you could form a stronger political coalition for tearing up the status quo and combining market pressure with universal coverage. But rational reform is pretty hard when the opposition party is able to convince itself that anything you do, including things they favored just the other day, are the death of freedom.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, February 2, 2012
Willard Mitt Romney Rails Against “Entitlement Society” — That Takes Chutzpa
Earlier this week, Republican Presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney delivered a speech framing the 2012 presidential election as a choice between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.”
It really takes chutzpa for a guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth to rail against an “entitlement society.” Here is a guy who got his start in life the old-fashioned way — he inherited it.
Now I realize that you don’t get to choose your parents. He had no role in deciding that he would be born into the family of an auto executive and Michigan Governor — but at least he should have the decency not to attack “entitlements.”
This is not a guy who pulled himself up by his boot-straps. His name, his family connections and — not incidentally — his money gave him a real leg up when he decided to go into the investment banking business. And let’s not forget that when he did go into business for himself, he didn’t make money building things or inventing things — or designing new products. He made money buying companies, and often breaking them up, or firing employees.
Last Sunday’s New York Times reported that Romney continued to make money from his old firm Bain Capital through his time as Governor and his attempts to run for Senate and President. It noted that much of his income is likely taxed at only 15% — though we don’t know for sure since he refuses to release his tax returns.
He is the poster boy for the one percent — and he is talking about “entitlements”?
If you ask someone on the street which kid in high school Mitt Romney reminds him of, he is likely to tell you it’s the kid who drove to school in a Ferrari and got all the socially “in” girls. He was the smug guy who knew he was set for life.
As humorist and political commentator Jim Hightower used to say of the first George Bush — Romney is a guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. And he is lecturing America about the “entitlement society? ”
And let’s look at what he refers to as “entitlements.” Mainly he’s talking about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Let’s remember that Social Security and Medicare are not “entitlements” at all. They are earned benefits that people pay for through their payroll taxes throughout their working lives.
And Medicaid? It’s the program that guarantees that if you’re a child who is not lucky enough to be born into the household of an auto executive and Michigan Governor you still get health care. It’s the program that assures that if you weren’t lucky enough to have a trust fund — or if some investment banker bought your company and fired you — that you can still get treatment if you get hit by a bus. It’s the program that assures that when you’re 80 years old and get Alzheimer’s but your 401-K disappeared because a bunch of Wall Street sharpies made reckless investments and sunk the economy — you can get long-term care instead of being left to die on the street.
Then again that’s not something a guy like Mitt Romney would know about. In fact he admitted the other day that he didn’t really know the difference between Medicare and Medicaid until he was 55 years old. Guess a guy who has about $200 million in assets doesn’t have to worry about such things.
You see, a guy like Romney doesn’t have the foggiest that the government initiatives he attacks are precisely the things that actually do create “an opportunity society.”
It was the GI Bill that sent the generation of Americans that fought World War II to college. It is Pell Grants and government-guaranteed student loans that allow most middle class Americans to send their kids to college.
It was Medicare and Social Security that rescued American seniors from poverty and provided guaranteed health care and a guaranteed base income for retirement. Romney, of course, wouldn’t know how important an average $14,000 annual Social Security benefit is to an everyday senior — that’s an hour’s compensation for the high-flying Wall Street types he hung around with at Bain Capital.
No, Romney is much more interested in privatizing Social Security and Medicare so his Wall Street buddies can get their hands on the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds — even though that would eliminate the guaranteed benefits that are so critical to the health and welfare of America’s seniors.
Romney and the Republicans in Washington don’t seem to give a rat’s rear about the unemployment insurance or payroll tax holiday that will expire in ten days because the House Republicans have refused to pass a two-month extension while the terms of a year-long extension can be negotiated.
Forty dollars a paycheck — the cost of the increased payroll tax bite that everyday families will experience the first of the year — may not mean much to a multi-millionaire like Mitt Romney. But to ordinary families, $40 is the electric bill or several bags of groceries — and after just a few pay periods, it begins to add up pretty fast.
Turns out that when Republicans in Washington talk about taxes, they’re not so worried about a $40 increase ordinary people will have to pay in payroll taxes every time they get a paycheck. They’re worried about million dollar tax breaks for the gang on Wall Street.
Romney doesn’t even seem to have a clue that it is funding for public education and the public infrastructure that allows everyday Americans to have an opportunity to succeed — or that government has a responsibility to jumpstart the economy so that everyday, middle class people can get jobs.
In fact, he seems to agree with the Republican leaders of the House who say that unemployment benefits discourage people from looking for work. Guess Mitt has never been one of the five people competing for every available job. Oh, I forgot, Mitt says he is “unemployed” too. Talk about out of touch.
No, Romney’s view of an “opportunity society” is one where the government does nothing to help prevent foreclosures “so the market can bottom out.” It is one where the government stands by while the American auto industry collapses and costs a million Americans their good middle class jobs.
Then again, maybe Mitt’s idea of an “opportunity society” is having the “opportunity” to win the lottery — or maybe that would be a $10,000 bet. Doesn’t everyone make those?
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, December 22, 2011
Mitt Romney’s Healthcare Competence Called Into Question
The conventional wisdom keeps telling me that Mitt Romney, for all his many faults (chronic dishonesty, incessant flip-flopping, cowardice, etc.), is at least a smart guy who cares about policy. Romney may lack integrity, we’re told, but at least he’s a vaguely technocratic wonk.
Except, I’m not at all convinced this guy is any smarter than his hapless Republican rivals. Romney speaks in complete sentences, which makes him look like a genius compared to Rick Perry, but consider some of the things the former governor says about his understanding of public policy. Here’s a gem from Iowa earlier today:
“Medicaid. You wonder what Medicaid is; those who aren’t into all this government stuff. You know, I have to admit, I didn’t know the differences between all these things until I got into government. Then I got into it and I understood that Medicaid is the health care program for the poor, by and large.”
I see. So, Mitt Romney, despite two degrees from Harvard, learned what Medicaid is when he became governor in 2002. He was 55 years old at the time.
Before he “got into government” and discovered what Medicaid is, Romney helped run a health company, which relied heavily on funding from — you guessed it — Medicare and Medicaid. What’s more, in his book, Romney boasts about having been a health care consultant, where he developed an expertise in how to deal with entitlements.
But he didn’t know what Medicaid was until he got into government?
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. “Romney didn’t mean what he said this morning,” you’re going to tell me. “He was only saying he didn’t understand Medicaid so that he could pretend to relate to the people in the audience. This wasn’t ignorance; it was pandering.”
Perhaps. I can’t say with certainty what Romney is ignorant of, and what he only pretends to be ignorant of.
But if this is the accurate explanation, let’s appreciate a disconcerting fact: Romney is so desperate to appear folksy, he’s willing to lie about his lack of awareness to get people to relate to him. And that’s just sad.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 16, 2011
GOP Super Committee Co-Chair: Lawmakers Failed Because Democrats Refused To Privatize Medicare
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) faults the Democrats’ refusal to accept partial Medicare privatization for the super committee’s inability to come up with a bipartisan plan to lower spending in today’s Wall Street Journal. He writes, “Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president’s health law was off the table” and pretends that the spending in the Affordable Care Act added to the deficit (it actually reduces it). “Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year,” he continues and lays out the premium support proposal offered by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici:
The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose….These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget’s approach—except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.
This approach was also rejected by committee Democrats.
The Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare trustees, and the Government Accountability Office have each repeatedly said that our health-care entitlements are unsustainable. Committee Democrats offered modest adjustments to these programs, but they were far from sufficient to meet the challenge. And even their modest changes were made contingent upon a minimum of $1 trillion in higher taxes—a move sure to stifle job creation during the worst economy in recent memory.
Hensarling doesn’t mention that the Rivlin-Domenici premium-support proposal doesn’t so much lower national health care spending as it shifts it to the beneficiary. The plan reduces the federal contribution to Medicare by capping costs for each beneficiary and offering premium support credits that won’t keep up with actual health care spending. The federal government spends less, but seniors will pay more out of pocket for health care benefits every year. The proposal also breaks up the market clout of traditional Medicare and rather than ratcheting up some of efficiencies and payment reforms in the Affordable Care Act, it sets the nation on an untested path of private competition — leaving seniors vulnerable to the manipulations of for-profit health insurers.
Democrats, for their part, offered rather substantial concessions on Medicare spending. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argued, the Democrats’ $3 trillion deficit proposal to the super committee “stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate’s ‘Gang of Six,’ and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission.” The plan contained “substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan.” For instance, Bowles-Simpson offered $383 billion in Medicare and Medicaid, while Democrats put $475 billion on the table.
President Obama introduced $320 billion in health care savings, mostly from the pharmaceutical industry and other providers, including rural hospitals, teaching hospitals, and biotechnology firms. But the plan even incorporated the GOP’s push for greater means testing in Medicare, asking some wealthier beneficiaries to pay more for coverage and sought to give beneficiaries “skin in the game” — as the GOP puts it — to discourage over treatment.
All of these are significant concessions — as are the health cuts included in the trigger mechanism — but Hensarling and Republicans aren’t interested in bipartisan agreement. They’re not accepting anything short of Medicare privatization.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, November 22, 2011
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