So everyone knows I don’t have a TV and that the only thing on TV that I think is worth watching is Bret Baier on Fox News’ Special Report. Let’s see why, below.
BAIER: Like the “Union Leader,” your critics charge that you make decisions based on political expediency and not core conviction. You have been on the both sides of some issues, and there’s videotape of you going back years, speaking about different issues, climate change, abortion, immigration, gay rights.
How can voters trust what they hear from you today is what you will believe if you win the White House?
ROMNEY: Well, Bret, your list is just not accurate. So, one, we’re going to have to be better informed about my views on issues. My view is, you can look at what I’ve written in my book. You can look at a person who has devoted his life to his family, to his faith, to his country, and I’m running for president because of the things I believe I think I can do to help this country.
And I know in politics there are going to be those who try in every way they can to tear down one another, but the real question is, does Barack Obama have the capacity to lead this country out of a very difficult economic setting? And the answer is no. He’s proven he doesn’t. And I do.
That’s my experience. That’s what I know how to do. The American people want someone who knows how to lead, who believes in the free economy, and understands the principals it takes to get America strong, economically, militarily, and culturally.
BAIER: But I’m sure you’ve seen these ads, using videotape of you in previous years, speaking on various issues.
ROMNEY: Uh-huh.
BAIER: And it seems like it’s in direct contrast to positions you take now.
ROMNEY: Well, I’m glad that the Democratic ads are breaking through and you got —
BAIER: Jon Huntsman has a couple ads that do the exact same thing.
So Romney is saying to Republican voters “never mind what I am saying in my own words in those videos, just read my book instead”.
It’s easy to find videos of Mitt Romney speaking in his own words endorsing abortion, embryonic stem cell research, gay rights, gun control, man-made global warming, amnesty, and pretty much every position that Obama holds. His Romneycare health care plan is quite similar to Obamacare, and has created enormous budget deficits in Massachussetts.
Anyway, Bret’s questions seem fair to me, but it turns out that Romney was offended by them:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, complained to Fox News Special Report anchor Bret Baier after an interview on Tuesday that Baier’s questioning had been “overly aggressive” and “uncalled for,” according to Baier.
“He was irritated by the interview after we were done,” Baier said of Romney when he appeared on Fox News’s “O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday to discuss the interview.
O’Reilly asked Baier: “How do you know he was irritated? Did he slap you? Or what did he do?”
Well, he just made it clear at the end of the interview,” said Baier.
“Tell me how he made it clear?” asked O’Reilly. “What it is–did he say something to you?
“He said he thought it was overly aggressive,” said Baier.
“He did, he said that to you?” said O’Reilly. “He said it was overly aggressive?”
“He did,” affirmed Baier.
“And as we were walking in the walk and talk and then after he finished he went to his holding room and then came back and said he didn’t like the interview and thought it was uncalled for,” said Baier.
Is this thin-skinned RINO the person we want in the Oval office in 2012? Why elect a clone of Obama?
You can see some of the videos featuring Mitt Romney in this post and this post.
Mitt Romney is the most liberal candidate running in the primary – there are even more videos showing that the man is liberal on abortion, gay rights, global warming, gun control, government-controlled health care, and so on. He is a moderate Democrat – he has no record as a conservative. If elected, he would govern about 80% as liberal Barack Obama governs now. He is to the left of John McCain, in my view.
Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney’s landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney’s own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare.”
The records, gleaned from White House visitor logs reviewed by NBC News, show that senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006, when the Republican presidential candidate was governor of Massachusetts. One of those meetings, on July 20, 2009, was in the Oval Office and presided over by President Barack Obama, the records show.
“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”
[…]The White House visitor logs suggest that, if Obama officials didn’t talk directly with Romney, senior presidential aides did consult with others — like Gruber — who played important roles in helping to craft and implement the Massachusetts law.
In addition to Obama himself, the meetings attended by Gruber were presided over by the president’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, then budget director Peter Orzag and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s chief adviser on health care, the records show. Gruber was also given a $380,000 contract by the Obama administration in 2009 to work with Congress on drafting a new federal law based on the Massachusetts law, records show.
Another Romney administration adviser consulted by the White House was Jon Kingsdale, a health-care expert who was appointed in 2006 by one of Romney’s Cabinet secretaries, Thomas Trimarco, to serve as executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority — the state agency charged with implementing the new Massachusetts health-care law.
Let’s have a quick re-cap of Romneycare, shall we?
As part of his liberal phase when governor of Massachusetts — political principles have been ever-flexible for Romney — he orchestrated passage of legislation with eerie similarities to ObamaCare. Massachusetts mandates purchase of insurance, decides what benefits must be offered, and maintains a complex system of subsidies and penalties. Declared Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker, the two programs are “not identical, but they’re certainly close kin.” MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who advised both Gov. Romney and President Obama on health care, asserted: “Basically, it’s the same thing.”[…]Alas, even the former governor’s constitutional scruples are suspect. In 1994 he backed a federal mandate. His concern about the overweening federal government apparently was not so finely developed then.
[…]However, paying for more benefits for more people inevitably makes medicine more expensive. Costs for Commonwealth Care, the Massachusetts government’s subsidized insurance program alone are up a fifth over initial projections. Last year State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill wrote: “The universal insurance coverage we adopted in 2006 was projected to cost taxpayers $88 million a year. However, since this program was adopted in 2006, our health-care costs have in total exceeded $4 billion. The cost of Massachusetts’ plan has blown a hole in the Commonwealth’s budget.”
[…]State finances have not collapsed only because RomneyCare spread the costs widely, forcing virtually everyone in and out of the state to share the pain. Cahill cited federal subsidies as keeping the state afloat financially. Indeed, a June study from the Beacon Hill Institute concluded that “The state has been able to shift the majority of the costs to the federal government.” The Institute pointed to higher costs of $8.6 billion since the law was implemented. Just $414 million was paid by Massachusetts. Medicaid (federal payments) covered $2.4 billion. Medicare took care of $1.4 billion.
But even more costs, $4.3 billion, have been imposed on the private sector — employers, insurers, and residents. This estimate is in line with an earlier study by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which figured that 60% of the new costs fell on individuals and businesses.
As expenses have risen, so have premiums. Noted Kuttner, “because serious cost containment was not part of the original package, premium costs in the commonwealth have risen far faster than nationally — by 10.3%, the most recent year available.” Economists John F. Cogan, Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel Kessler figured that RomneyCare inflated premiums by 6% from 2006 to 2008. This at a time where the state-subsidized Commonwealth Care was displacing private insurance for many people, thereby reducing demand, which should have reduced cost pressures.
Unfortunately, noted the Beacon Hill Institute, “private companies have no choice but to pass the higher costs onto the insured. Some of these costs fall in the double-digit range.” That naturally displeased public officials, since it undercut their claim to have solved Massachusetts’ health care problems.
The Bay State’s controversial 2006 universal health-care plan — also known as “Romneycare” — has cost Massachusetts more than 18,000 jobs, according to an exclusive blockbuster study that could provide ammo to GOP rivals of former Gov. Mitt Romney as he touts his job-creating chops on the campaign trail.
“Mandating health insurance coverage and expanding the demand for health services without increasing supply drove up costs. Economics 101 tells us that,” said Paul Bachman, research director at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute, the conservative think tank that conducted the study. The Herald obtained an exclusive copy of the findings.
“The ‘shared sacrifice’ needed to provide universal health care includes a net loss of jobs, which is attributable to the higher costs that the measure imposed,” said David Tuerck, the institute’s executive director.
…Despite Romney’s vaunted business acumen as a successful venture capitalist, Bachman said the former governor “was a little naive about what would become of the law.”
The Beacon Hill Institute study found that, on average, Romneycare:
cost the Bay State 18,313 jobs;
drove up total health insurance costs in Massachusetts by $4.311 billion;
slowed the growth of disposable income per person by $376; and
reduced investment in Massachusetts by $25.06 million.
The 2006 reform jeopardized the solvency of private health plans in the Bay State. Unfortunately, insurers’ solvency is not something patients, physicians, and voters have reason to observe closely, so the political class suffers from perverse incentives once it starts micromanaging health insurance. As a result, higher costs have been passed on through higher per capita spending and premium growth.
According to the state’s 2010 annual report, today “per capita spending on health care in Massachusetts is 15 percent higher than the rest of the nation, even when accounting for wages and spending on medical research and education in Massachusetts.” Indeed, Professor John F. Cogan of Stanford University has concluded the 2006 reform led to premium growth 6 percent higher in Massachusetts than in the rest of the United States between 2006 and 2008.
Because it was politically intolerable to allow premiums to rise in line with the costs of Romneycare, the state’s insurance commissioner denied 235 of 276 rate increase requests in April 2010. For a short time, no new policies were offered, and plans suffered significant losses. The next month, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the state’s largest carrier, announced a $55 million provision for anticipated losses in the second quarter alone.
Of the 12 largest carriers, five were already operating at a loss. At this point, even if the state allows Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts to increase rates in line with medical costs, my analysis concludes the carrier will become insolvent in the vicinity of 2017. Other carriers will soon follow.
Clever campaign speeches and witty debate zingers today don’t cancel out a liberal leftist record on policy yesterday.
WINTERY KNIGHT 