Its hard to tell what Mitt Romney would do to solve the problem of sick uninsured Americans. Right now, these people often cant find insurers willing to sell them policies or, if they can, the costs are prohibitive. Under Obamas Affordable Care Act, insurance companies will be required, beginning in 2014, to sell policies to anyone who wants one and to ignore customers health status when setting prices. This is possible because the ACA also requires nearly everyone to buy health insurance, flooding the market with millions of new customers, including healthy people, whose premiums will subsidize the cost of covering the sick.

Covering people with pre-existing conditions is one of the most popular pieces of Obamacare, and Mitt Romney is doing his best to imply that his health care plan would accomplish this lofty goal as well. But there are a few problems. Romney wants to repeal Obamacare and he doesnt really have a comprehensive plan to replace it, at least not one that hes made publicly available. In the absence of this, voters can look at his runningmate Paul Ryans budget proposals that include health care policy or they can look at Massachusetts, which essentially has a state version of Obamacare championed by Romney when he was governor.

Hes at the top of the ticket, so its not fair to judge him by Ryans past proposals, he says. And the Massachusetts health care reform was right for Massachusetts, but not the nation, he says, so its not fair to judge his presidential plans based on that. Thats fine. But surely it must be fair to judge what Romney said about the problem of the uninsured last time he was running for president, right?

Heres what Romney said in January 2008, explaining why, prior to reform in Massachusetts, uninsured people who could afford insurance nonetheless didnt buy it:

They said why should we buy it? If we get sick, we can go to the hospital and get care for freeThey shouldnt be allowed just to show up at the hospital and say somebody else should pay for me, so we said no more free ridersWe said if you can afford insurance, then either have the insurance or get a health savings account, pay your own way, but no more free rideI think its the conservative approach to make sure that people who can afford insurance are getting it at their expense, not at the expense of the taxpayers or the government. That I consider a step towards socialism.

Four years later, Romney talks about emergency room hospital care for the uninusured as a safety net, not as proof of irresponsibility. Heres how the Columbus Post Dispatch reported what Romney told its editorial board on Wednesday:

We dont have a setting across this country where if you dont have insurance, we just say to you, Tough luck, youre going to die when you have your heart attack, he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of Obamacare, which he has pledged to repeal.

No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and its paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We dont have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they dont have insurance.

He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance although hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs.

Romney made similar comments to 60 Minutes back in September, explaining that people without insurance have an option to get carein the hospital.

Here is the original post:

What We Still Don't Know About Romney and Health Care