‘Obamacare’: What is Romney’s alternative?

“I’m trying to figure out just where Mitt Romney stands on health-care reform,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, and evidently “so is Mitt Romney.” This week the man who promised conservatives he’d repeal President Obama’s Affordable Care Act caused an uproar by telling NBC’s Meet the Press that “there are a number of things I like in health-care reform,” including the act’s requirement that insurers offer coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. Conservatives erupted in outrage, said Steve Benen in MSNBC.com, and the Romney camp rushed out a series of its now-familiar “clarifications”: first that Romney believed the free market would solve the pre-existing condition problem, then another hours later saying that a President Romney would ban “discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage.” Even for the “Etch A Sketch” candidate,” three different positions on an issue in a single day is a record.

“Poppycock,” said Jennifer Rubin in WashingtonPost.com. Romney’s position on health care has been consistent all along. He will repeal Obamacare in its entirety. He will ensure that those with pre-existing conditions don’t lose their insurance if they change jobs, or switch between plans. And for those with pre-existing conditions who don’t already have insurance, Romney proposes setting up “high-risk pools” that would be required to accept all applicants. Romney’s plan, in other words, is the same as “just about every conservative health-care proposal in recent years,” said Yuval Levin in NationalReview.com, including John McCain’s in 2008. But the liberal media now thinks Obamacare is “the definition of health-care reform,” so it reflexively assumes that any other plan would be a step backward. In reality, it’s entirely possible to extend insurance coverage to people who are excluded because of pre-existing conditions without Obama’s monstrously complex, $2 trillion “disaster.”

The Affordable Care Act has flaws, said Carolyn McClanahan in Forbes.com, but Romney’s alternative seems to be no plan at all. Federal law already requires insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions if they’ve maintained “continuous coverage.” But 89 million Americans don’t qualify for that protection. Sending the sickest of them to “high-risk pools” would result in extremely high premiums that “will truly be unaffordable for most of the population.” As the author of Romneycare in Massachusetts, Romney knows all this, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. He knows that without ACA’s individual mandate, insurers simply couldn’t afford to cover those with pre-existing conditions, or to keep children on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26—the ACA’s other most popular provision. So Romney wants people to believe he’ll keep all the popular parts of Obamacare, and get rid of the unpopular parts. That’s not a coherent policy. “It’s a campaign ploy.”

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Come on now, said Grace-Marie Turner in NationalReview.com. It would be “politically foolish” for Romney to scrap the ACA’s most popular provisions. If elected, Romney will find a way “to get health reform right, without turning one sixth of the economy over to the federal government.” Now I understand, said Ezra Klein in WashingtonPost.com. It’s the same position Romney has taken on tax cuts, deficits, and entitlements: He’s for whatever pleases both his conservative base and centrist swing voters, and if that sounds confusing, “he’ll explain later.” The big problem with “trying to strategically confuse people is that you actually confuse them.”