Do We Know Who Mitt Romney Is Or What He Believes?
February 1, 2012 21 Comments
Mitt Romney won the Florida primary last night and seems poised to take the GOP nomination. His biggest asset seems to be that Republicans think he’s electable. He certainly has the old guard establishment on his side. Make no mistake, Mitt Romney is a terrific businessman who knows how to make money. Obviously he’s shown the ability to lead whether it’s in business, at the Olympics or as Governor of Massachusetts.
But for all of that, do we even really know who Mitt Romney is or what he believes? If there’s one thing that has been evident at the first 19 debates it’s that Mitt Romney has trouble articulating the conservative position. He says he’s for tax cuts but his economic plan is convoluted with 50+ points. It doesn’t take 50 points to adequately explain the conservative position on the economy. Romney has never opposed regulatory action by government, he seems not interested in reducing regulation but rather he seems interested in shifting it around to make it more “economical.”
Obviously we all know about Romneycare, which is essentially the state version of Obamacare. Romney has defended the plan and seems to only oppose Obamacare because it’s a Federal plan not a state plan. When did it become conservative to support a massive state run health care system? Romney weasels out of this question by talking about states rights, something most conservatives love to hear. But doing so only deflects attention away from the fact that Romney signed into law a massive state run health care system.
On issues of life, Romney’s record is the opposite of what he is now saying on the campaign trail. When he ran for Governor just a decade ago he said he was committed to the pro-choice cause. He said he believed in parental consent for a minor to have an abortion but supported judge’s having the ability to overrule parents.
Yes, Romney says that he’s had a change of heart. But does that change of heart mean he will nominate only pro-life judges to the Supreme Court? Romney has never committed to such a litmus test. In fact, Romney hasn’t talked about judges at all. If we look at his record as Governor, he did little more than appoint liberal Democrats to the bench. Perhaps it’s true, in a state as blue as Massachusetts Romney couldn’t nominate conservatives. But that still leaves the question open, what sort of judge will Romney appoint? We have no idea.
Just a decade ago Romney called himself a progressive Republican. Not surprising given his upbringing. Mitt’s father George was Governor of Michigan in the 60′s. He had good things to say about radical leftist Saul Alinsky. Romney went the liberal Cranbrook School in metro Detroit as a child. Mitt was raised by liberals, educated by liberals and a decade ago identified himself as a progressive liberal.
With all of that in mind are we to believe he had a sudden change of heart? Romney references no moment when he realized the leftist cause was wrong. Even if we believe that Romney has had a conversion to the conservative cause, he doesn’t have the foundation to serve as President. We’re talking about a man who until he decided to run for President was a leftist.
Let’s say he’s rejected liberalism, it doesn’t mean he now has an intellectually conservative foundation. Quite the opposite, he still has his liberal foundation. It shows itself when he defends Romneycare but opposes Obamacare. It shows itself when he suggests regulatory reform that doesn’t actually make government smaller. It shows itself in a 50+ point economic plan.
In short, we don’t really know who Mitt Romney is. We don’t know what he really believes. We have no idea how he’s going to govern. He had no conservative foundation, much less a conservative Christian foundation. This is the man the Republican Party thinks will defeat Obama? This is the man the GOP thinks is going to govern better than Obama? Maybe Romney really is a conservative but there’s a much greater chance that Mitt Romney will be the second coming of Richard Nixon, just without the tapes and criminal activity. His life long record suggests as such.
About Steven
Yes, thank God not all the Republican candidates are wing-nut conservatives. Seems that the people of Massachusetts, as the people of Canada do, really like their health insurance coverage. Rommey is intelligent enough to realize that our present health care system that cost double of any other country and supplies far less needs drastic reform. Wing-nut conservatives have a huge knee-jerk reaction to new federal regulations over health insurance but offer absolutely no alternative other then to let em’ die in the street. We need rational and reality based leadership not ideologues!
Since when does opposition to government health insurance equal wanting to see people die in the streets? The fact of the matter is that Canada, which you cite, has horrendous waiting lists for basic tests like MRI’s and cat scans, for appointments to see cancer doctors and for basic procedures.
The alternative to government run health care is a system of private insurance. One of the problems with health insurance as it currently stands is that consumers have limited options and aren’t invested in their own health care. The result is inflated prices and mediocre service on the part of health insurers and providers as well as a complete lack of competition. Remove the barriers to competition, largely created by government, and you’ll see prices drop, customer service improvements and a population more invested in their own health and health services.
Yes, let them suffer and die in the street-now those are good Christian values that Jesus could vote for!
So, speaking as a man who a) is from the States, b) currently lives in Canada and b) whose wife spent much of 2011 in cancer treatment, I feel reasonably qualified to weigh in on a couple things.
First, you will undoubtedly have longer wait times for elective stuff and non-urgent stuff. If you need a new knee for instance, it could be a long wait. This varies by procedure and by location (e.g. if you are in Toronto it is less of an issue than if you are in the boonies – but you could say the same for the States). Contra your assertion, Steve, the system is extremely responsive to a serious diagnoses. In fact, this is what drives the longer waits for less urgent care – overall lower capacity being allocated to more serious needs. I think that is pretty cool and is quite efficient (as evidenced by better on average outcomes for just about everything ‘up here’ at about half the cost).
I’ve been in both systems and am horrified at the prospect of moving back to the States. The idea of arguing with for-profit insurance companies whose only incentives are to max(premium – claims paid) while trying to keep my kids sane while we help mom quite literally fight for her life sounds like absolute hell. Then we get to wonder when we’re going to get dumped by our insurance company – when the lifetime max is reached, when they’ll refuse to pay. Liquidating everything I’ve built up to pay my medical bills because I was unlucky. Medical costs as the #1 driver of bankruptcy? That is inhumane.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2007/10/15/waittimes-fraser.html
Canadian waiting lists are appalling. We don’t have such lists in the US, certainly not ones created by government.
If medical bills are the #1 driver of bankruptcy it’s news to me. I’ve yet to have a single client come to me with a potential bankruptcy that needed one for any reason other than credit cards and other loans. That’s not to say that such bankruptcies don’t exist but they’re existence is overblown. Most people are bankrupt because they lost their job and/or their eyes are to big for their wallet.
The aggregate evidence suggests medical costs are very important in predicting bankruptcy. You won’t like them because they are generally done by scientists (rather than corporate think tanks), but do a quick Google search and you’ll find plenty. Either way, I’ll go ahead and stipulate that it is overblown and say medical costs aren’t #1. What number is acceptable? How many people should liquidate all they own because they have cancer? I prefer to live in a society in which that number is essentially zero.
We are comparing systems, not a system against some ideal. No system is perfect – there will always be trade-offs. I just happen to like the Canadian trade-offs better. I’m okay waiting for my electives and am willing to be uncomfortable for a longer period of time if the return is lower overall costs and ~100% coverage of society members with equivalent outcomes to the States (i.e. no degradation of care). Ultimately, I don’t want a profit-driven middleman between me and my doctors.
An important element of the single payer system that gets no play in the States – we have full competition at the physician level. I have full choice of doc and specialist. This explains some of the wait times for elective procedures. For instance, my wife picked the surgeon for her gall bladder removal after doing her own research on outcomes, infection rates, etc. and she was willing to wait to get in. She could have gone to a lesser surgeon and been in sooner. And the ease of the paperwork!! Awesome!!! Flash your card and every system is talking to every other system (surgical oncologist to medical oncologist to radiation oncologist to endocrinologist to family practitioner to radiologist, etc.). Radically reduced overhead at the physician level, especially at hospitals.
When government controls health care they control who you can visit, what you can visit them for, what treatments you may receive, when you can receive them etc. Canada and Europe are great if you have a cold, there are tons of GP’s out there to serve you. Where they lack are specialists, which is what we have no lack of here in the US.
You aren’t going to reduce the cost of health care when the Federal government mandates birth control as part of health insurance. Doing as such adds $150-600 to the cost of health insurance for the average 13-55 year old woman. Add on all the other mandates from government and it’s no wonder the cost of insurance is out of control.
The solution is a reduction in the amount of direct government involvement in health insurance. People need to be able to choose their health insurer, choose the coverage they want and pay for as much of it out of pocket, or seemingly out of pocket as possible. That makes people invested in their own health care rather than passive consumers of health services. HSA’s are a good example of a tax incentive that puts people in control of their own health services. There’s no reason why HSA’s and the tax incentives that go with them from being expanded so that people control more of their health services.
At the end of the day, control from DC isn’t going to make anyone healther. It will result in waiting lists and absurd anti-religious dictates, among other dictates, from on high. We don’t need more government, we need less of it. Health care is in desparate need of a free market and actual competition.
You are over the place, dude!! : )
“When government controls health care they control who you can visit, what you can visit them for, what treatments you may receive, when you can receive them etc.”. True. But the alternative you support is a profit maximizing insurance agency dictating who you can visit, what you can visit them for, what treatments you may receive, when you can receive them etc. I was far more constrained in the States than I am in Canada, despite ‘government control’.
There’s a huge difference. With private insurance you can fire the insurance company if you don’t like their policies. You can’t fire the government. The key here is individual control, something unavailable in Canada or Europe.
In a sense, I ‘fired’ my government (and overall healthcare system) by moving to Canada. You can ‘fire’ the government this way, too. Or you can vote for reps to do what you like. If you don’t get what you want, well, that’s the hazard of living in a representative democracy, eh?
The idea of ‘firing’ your insurance company is great; love it. But to go to what? Another for profit agency interested only in taking advantage of you in every way they possibly can. That isn’t really an option nor is it anything like ‘individual control’. Firm management may put a smiley face on it, but a corporate insurance company will always, always, always be actively working against you and your doctors – your interests directly contradict the interests of the shareholders and the managers are legally required to put the shareholders interests first. No amount of competition will overcome this fundamental contradiction. As a result, firm managers will look for every excuse to increase premiums and to reduce claim payments – that IS the objective function.
On the other hand, as imperfect as it may be (and it is certainly imperfect), a government insurance agency has a very, very different objective function: general welfare. As such, you and your health are expressly considered in a way a corporate insurance agency never will. Given that we have no control over whether and when we get sick, I like this better.
Regardless, I objectively have more control over my care here in Canada than I did in the States (while paying about 1/2 as much per capita for equivalent outcomes). I know that is counter to the meme in the States, but it is true.
We don’t have a representative democracy, we have a representative republic. A republic protects the rights of the minority, a democracy is tyranny by the majority.
The idea that a for profit company is always working against its customers is just absurd. Truth be told, American health insurers only make 2-3% in profit, which is significantly less than other forms of insurance as well as any number of other insurers.
If there is a problem with companies denying things they shouldn’t be denying then we have two issues to tackle, both government created. As I said earlier, we’re passive consumers of health services. Our employer hands us a policy that we have little or no say over. This problem was created by employers seeking to compensate employees when taxes became to high in the 40′s. If we were buying our own insurance, we wouldn’t be passive consumers. Second, the Federal government prohibits insureds from suing their health insurer for failing to pay for services without jumping through an absurd amount of hoops and if the insured loses then he has to pay for his health insurers attorney fees. This affectively shields health insurers from being sued.
My position is that government should provide to employers and employees the same tax incentives as they do now but allow the employer to place funds it would have spent on an insurance policy into a HSA. The employee can then puchase their own insurance. This should be optional, if an employee wants to stick with the company plan that would be their choice. The more involved we are with our own health insurance the more we’ll care about the service we’re receiving. The way it is right now, it’s a tragedy of the commons. We expect everything, don’t want to pay for any of it and we complain about everything we aren’t paying for.
Fair enough re: republic v. democracy.
Do you agree that the objectives of a for-profit agency and government single-payer agency differ?
A for profit corporation seeks to maximize profits, which in order to do so causes them to make rational decisions and make an effort to please customers. Government makes political decisions that will make 25-30% of the country happy in order to gain re-election. (I’m going on half the country voting and a candidate needing half the votes to win)
Government makes political decisions, which is why for example in Canada and the UK there are plenty of GP’s to go around but not enough specialists. The government doesn’t make a rational decision based on free market allocation of resources but instead makes a political decision. More people will be “happy” and will therefore re-elect people in power if they can visit a doctor for a cold once in awhile in an easy manner. Since substantially less than the majority of a population are seriously ill at any given point in time, the government doesn’t need to care as much about making sure that portion of healthcare is viable. In other words, they make purely political decisions that have little to do with economics.
Ok, cool. So, we agree that for a for-profit insurance company, profit is the sole objective – the ends to be achieved by some means. So, how does this for-profit insurance company maximize profits? That is, if you are homo economicus (which you assume) operating the firm, what is your optimal strategy?
Sell your product to the most people possible. How do you do that? Provide good customer service, make people believe that they’re getting value for their money. It’s not just about cutting corners or cutting services. In a competitive marketplace a company needs to provide good service and value in order to have people continue to buy their product.
I never said it was ONLY about cutting corners or cutting services – I said it was always adversarial. Obviously, a given firm has to maintain some level of reasonableness to its operations. However, profit is the ultimate objective, don’t you have to take your self-serving, cutthroat, free market mentality to the logical end? This would suggest that, to the extent they can screw you (and create opportunities to screw you), they will. If there is a case to be made for not paying, profit motive dictates that they will make it, doesn’t it? It seems to me that whether there are 3 or 3,000 firms, they all have the same goal of extracting whatever they can from their clients. There is no money in altruism.
Personally, I’m totally fine with these overall dynamics in essentially all markets. If I buy Sony and they hose me, I’ll buy Samsung, etc. Health care is different. It is vital, all people will need it and you can’t control when or to what degree. When you need it, you have no ability to change (i.e. if Blue Cross refuses your surgery, you can’t just switch). Demand is almost completely inelastic. It strikes me kinda like national defense – you are part of this society, so you get the protection and we all chip in. For me, this feels like the right thing to do. So, I’m in a society that operates this way.
Health services are no different than any other service. The idea that insurance is or has to be adversarial is absurd. Most people never have a problem with their other forms of insurance, when they do there’s a legal remedy for them in court. That option isn’t available in health, which is problematic. Interestingly other forms of insurance are much more profitable than health insurance.
Health services aren’t inelastic. The problem is that there is no competition because individuals don’t buy their own insurance and often have no interest in which company serves them. That’s the biggest problem we have, the government has more or less ensured that there’s no health competition. It will be even worse under Obamacare, which isn’t going to make Americans any more invested in their health but will instead subject us to the dictates of Washington (see the contraception dictates). Worse, there won’t be any way out, which means we will have lost our health freedom.
Hi Steve. Hope you had a good weekend.
You keep saying my ‘ideas’ are ‘absurd’ without directly telling me why. Why is it absurd that the insurance company would work against me when possible? As I have stipulated all along, I recognize that they can’t be complete dirtbags or the response would be overwhelming. What I’m saying is that, at the margin they will take care of themselves, not you. I don’t understand why this is so offensive to you as it is perfectly consistent with rational actor economic theory. Give me some logic and evidence to convince me that an InsCo manager (like any other manager) won’t take care of his own interests before mine. Why in the world would he engage in charity while part of a for profit agency?
You assert “Health services are no different than any other service”. I disagree. Here are some reasons why. There is plenty of evidence that the market for health care itself is relatively unique, starting with the fact that there exists a massive insurance market for health care but not for the vast majority of other products and services. I can’t choose when I get sick, but I can choose when to buy my new TV or a dinner out. In addition, if I choose to wait for a sale on a TV, I almost never die. The price elasticity of your demand for a physician for your sick child is extremely low – a physician could charge you everything you own to save your child and you would give it. This is the definition of price inelasticity. You are not going to shop around for the best price when your child is sporting a 107-degree fever and is incoherent.
There are also reasons that the market for insurance is different from the market for TVs. You don’t pay for your TV for years and then expect it to come on in a decade. Similarly, the TV doesn’t get to say “hey…I’ve already got decades of Steve’s money, maybe I’ll just give him 4 channels and see if he squawks”. It is very hard to assess, right now, what your InsCo will do for you when the time comes – and when “that time” comes, you cannot shop around for a better firm and are facing a for profit agency with massive resources who would, given it’s druthers, pay you nothing. Can I take them to court? Sure, but the idea of battling an army of corporate lawyers for years while trying to take care of the health of a loved one (or yourself) sounds like absolute hell.
There is always a way out. Come to Canada! ; )
I don’t suggest that an insurance company wouldn’t unjustly deny service. These companies are by no means perfect. But if an insurer denies enough claims and is difficult to deal with they’ll lose customers. When government denies your claim or cannot provide service, where are you going to turn?
Health insurance was initially created to pay for major illness. For whatever reason we now expect our health insurers to pay for everything from routine checkups to contraception. This goes back to what I’ve been saying all along, we’re not invested in our own health. We expect someone else to pay for everything but we’re unwilling to pay anything ourselves. In any event, if we’re buying health insurance for ‘the big one’ how is that any different than buying auto insurance? You buy auto insurance for the big car crash, not for routine maintenance.
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“I don’t suggest that an insurance company wouldn’t unjustly deny service.” But that is exactly the rub – they have every incentive to do this at every opportunity. If you are comfortable with that dynamic, great. I personally am not, especially after my experiences in 2011.
“When government denies your claim or cannot provide service, where are you going to turn?” Well, around here we appeal to the social insurance system. If you don’t get relief, you go to court. It is worth noting that this will occur less often because, unlike a for-profit system, the welfare of the citizens (and providing a return for your tax dollars) is explicitly part of the decision process. That is, instead of actively looking for reasons to not pay, the system is looking to take care of the patient and society. I like these incentives better.
“…if we’re buying health insurance for ‘the big one’ how is that any different than buying auto insurance?” From my perspective, it starts with the centrality of my health vs. a thing. I don’t get to control when I get sick, etc., but I can control whether, how, where and what I drive. If something goes wrong when I have an accident and need my vehicle replaced, I can handle a drawn out battle with the insurance company cause I’m not continuously being bled by the medical system or trying to recover or take care of a loved one. To me, this seems very, very different.
The idea that investing in our own health differs because we have too much insurance doesn’t make sense to me – people aren’t sitting around saying “I’ll go with the 8oz Porterhouse…nah, I’ve great insurance, make it the 24oz!!”. Your premise is that things are just too easy for us and we’re spoiled, leading to “we need to invest in our health more”. If this is the way things work, one would expect to see lower overall health in countries with more coverage than the States (e.g. France, Canada, etc.) – that is, we in Canada are even more spoiled and less responsible/invested. If anything, the opposite is true – folks in the States are the fattest most out of shape folks on the planet, despite lesser insurance, while people in countries with socialized medicine are healthier.
In some ways, I feel worse using the system here than I did in the States. In the States, I’m taking profit from a faceless corporation. Here, I’m taking money from my neighbors. I feel far more obligation to my neighbors than a corporation.
The reason why health care costs less in Europe is because they don’t have specialists like we do. They also have waiting lists, which is something that doesn’t exist here outside of organ transplants.
I see a lot of comparissons between Europe and the US. Europe has a slightly higher life expectancy, which can largely be explained by illegals coming into the US which lowers our life expectancy and increases infant mortality. We can compare the amount Europe spends vs what we spend.and it’s fairly clear that Europe spends less. They also have waiting lists and less access to specialized care.
Comparing all of that and noting that the lifestyles of Americans and Europeans is different, though not as different as Americans who want to romanticize Europe wish to believe. It seems to me that health care really doesn’t matter all that much. By that I mean our life expectancy is about the same and that seems to me to be more a product of eating a more balanced diet, having adequate sewage and having access to basic medicine than it is healthcare itself.
In other words, we all more or less have access to flu shots and other vaccines that prevent diseases that used to kill thousands every year. We don’t have cholera and other sewage related diseases. We no longer have a limited diet of bread and in season vegetables, with years of subsistance eating and no more. In short, healthcare itself isn’t as big a deal as the bureaucrats make it out to be.
With that in mind, the question is do we want people to have health freedom or do we want everyone to be subject to the whim of the government. I happen to want health freedom in case I get a serious disease or a major injury. I see no reason why I should be forced to subject my health to a government bureaucrat. This is what insurance is all about, protecting against big health problems that require major medical interventions. Quite frankly, everything else should be paid out of pocket with charity picking up the tab for the poor.