Sunday, October 14, 2012 3:19:50 AM
Mitt Romney: None Of You Poors Die, I Think?
by Jesse Taylor
7:17 pm October 11, 2012
Mitt Romney, in his relentless effort to win over the liberal media by telling them strings of words that make it sound like he’s thinking, talked to the Columbus Dispatch yesterday [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html ] about healthcare. Perhaps the most controversial part of Romney’s healthcare plan (haha, we kid, Romney has no plan) is getting rid of Obamacare’s preexisting guarantee coverage. How, then, will Romney deal with that?
Romney, in a meeting with The Dispatch’s editorial board, said those who currently don’t carry insurance would have a chance to make a “choice” to be covered without fear of being denied. But he didn’t specify how long Americans would have to make that choice, or what would happen to those who chose not to be covered and later fell sick.
This is a rather smart way of dealing with people who have preexisting conditions on a particular date, then laughing at everyone else who didn’t discover their liver cancer until after Mitt Romney said it was okay. But what about everyone else? What if I decide to metastasize my tumor later on? Never fear, there’s a plan there, too!
Romney minimized the harm for Americans left without health insurance.
“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re 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 it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”
No, really, he said that. Nobody dies in their apartment anymore because they don’t have health insurance. Well, 45,000 a year do [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/17/us-usa-healthcare-deaths-idUSTRE58G6W520090917 ], but not in their apartments. Their landlords obviously call an ambulance to get them to the hospital so they can die with some goddamn dignity. This is America, after all.
What’s the best about Romney’s plan is that it’s designed as a punishment for people who wait around until they get sick and then demand reasonably priced healthcare. If you have a preexisting condition, you’re covered so long as you were covered while you had the condition and never, ever lost coverage for any reason – and the only reason anyone in America would lose coverage after any illness is pure grift and laziness.
After all, Ann Romney has a chronic disease and never lost her job of mothering. That’s dedication.
©2012 Wonkette Media LLC
http://wonkette.com/486527/mitt-romney-none-of-you-poors-die-i-think [with comments]
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Yes, Mr. Romney, Americans die for lack of insurance
October 11, 2012
http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/yes-mr-romney-americans-die-lack-insurance/
--
FactCheck: What’s Romney’s Plan for Preexisting Conditions?
Oct. 11, 2012
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/FactCheck_Whats_Romneys_Plan_for_Preexisting_Conditions.html?viewAll=y
--
Mitt Romney makes eloquent case for Obamacare
By Greg Sargent
Posted at 05:03 PM ET, 10/11/2012
Mitt Romney did an interview with the Columbus Dispatch [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html ] that’s getting a fair amount [ http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/11/990281/romney-uninsured-hospital/ ] of attention today [ http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/11/14370826-romney-sticks-to-ridiculous-emergency-room-argument ] because he repeated his argument that the uninsured can always get care in emergency rooms.
It was pretty bad. But there’s another part of the interview I wanted to flag, in which Romney inadvertently made an eloquent case for Obamacare, in a way that’s revealing about his own approach to policy. Romney, who would repeal Obamacare, claimed he too would like to come up with a way of covering those with preexisting conditions, as the health law does, but added there’s a problem with so doing:
“You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance,” said Romney, who favors letting states craft their own plans.
“But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance.
“It’d be the same thing as saying, ‘Look, you’re not required to have homeowners insurance, but if your home catches fire, then you can get insurance at that point.’ That wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
This is precisely why Obamacare has an individual mandate: Without one, it’s not feasible to require insurance companies to cover those with preexisting conditions, because it would lead people to only get insurance after they have gotten sick.
Note that Romney here says that covering those without insurance is a desirable policy goal. And yet he is vowing to repeal the law that is designed to remedy the very problem that he himself identified as an obstacle to carrying out that goal. Heck, he came up with the same remedy for this problem himself as Governor of Massachusetts.
Romney, of course, would say that he objects to Obamacare because it contains a federal mandate. Indeed, his advisers have suggested he favors states stepping in and protecting those with preexisting conditions. But this would require mandates for the same reasons. And Romney is not willing to say (these days, at least) that he thinks other states should broadly adopt mandates, either, because it would infuriate the GOP base, which has hated mandates ever since Obama adopted his.
More broadly, Romney has been badly misleading the public about his intentions towards those with preexisting conditions. When he’s talking to millions of people on television, he says his plan would protect them. Afterwards, when reporters start asking for clarification, his aides confirm that this would only apply to those with continuous coverage. At that point, of course, no one is listening anymore.
This latest iteration is even more absurd. Romney said we should take steps to cover the uninsured. But he then confirmed he would not compel insurance companies to cover many of those with preexisting conditions, correctly identifying the problems that would create. In so doing, he inadvertently made an eloquent case for the very solution to the problem that he would do away with, without coming up with any replacement solution of his own, even though the problem afflicts millions of Americans.
© 2012 The Washington Post (emphasis in original)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romney-makes-eloquent-case-for-obamacare/2012/10/11/f5f2e2fc-13db-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_blog.html [with comments]
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Mitt Romney's Hospital Comment 'Frightening' To Uninsured Woman
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, gestures during a rally in Richmond, Va., on Friday Oct. 12.
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
By Arthur Delaney
Posted: 10/12/2012 2:27 pm EDT Updated: 10/12/2012 4:13 pm EDT
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says that thanks to hospitals, Americans who lack health insurance don't have it so bad.
"We don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance, we just say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack,'" Romney told The Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html ], explaining why repealing President Obama's health care reform law would not result in catastrophe for sick people who can't buy insurance.
"No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital," Romney continued. "We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance."
Lianne Valenti said she finds Romney's comment "frightening."
Valenti, who is 47 and lives in Long Beach, Calif., knows what Romney's talking about better than Romney does, thanks to firsthand experience. She lost her job last year, and her health insurance along with it. In the fall, she started feeling mild chest pains. Researching online, she figured the problem was gallstones. She tried cheap alternative remedies instead of going to the doctor.
The spasms of pain got worse and worse, until one night in January it became unbearable. "I was sitting here in my chair and it lasted for two hours," Valenti told The Huffington Post at the time [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/unemployment-the-bad-thin_n_1236497.html ]. "It was all I could do to breathe. I couldn't open my eyes."
She had a friend take her to the hospital, where she said doctors told her she'd suffered a heart attack and almost died.
"If I had had my insurance I would have gone to the doctor in October," Valenti said. "The pain was unbearable. I've never had pain like that, and I've had three children."
She received a $79,000 bill, but she said the hospital has negotiated reasonably -- meaning it will eat some of the cost of her emergency treatment, and some of the cost will be passed along to other patients in the form of higher prices.
Before he became the Republican presidential nominee and vowed to repeal President Obama's health care law, Romney often bemoaned the cost [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/23/mitt-romney-60-minutes-health-care_n_1908129.html ] of treating uninsured people in emergency rooms.
"When they show up at the hospital, they get care," Romney said in 2007. "They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is."
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney championed a health care law requiring state residents to buy insurance while subsidizing the cost for poorer people. Romney's law, which has reduced emergency rooms visits [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/massachusetts-health-care-law_n_1645691.html ], served as a blueprint for Obamacare.
Numerous studies have suggested [ http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/romney-says-people-dont-die-because-they-lack-insurance----heres-why-hes-wrong.php ] that thousands of Americans die prematurely every year for lack of health insurance. Nearly 50 million [ http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb12-172.html ] are uninsured.
Romney's comment brought to Valenti's mind the recently reported death [ http://www.lbpost.com/news/2000000802-breaking-body-of-deceased-woman-found-downtown-no-foul-play-suspected ] of an apparently homeless woman outside city hall in Long Beach. Police called it an "undetermined death," according to the Long Beach Post.
In an email on Thursday, Valenti said, "The truth is she died because she couldn't afford to live, which should never happen in America."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/mitt-romney-hospital-uninsured_n_1961701.html [with comments]
--
Longtime Republicans torn between party loyalty and Obamacare
Jill Thacker and her daughter, JJ Thacker, share asthma medicine, since Jill's insurance doesn't pay for prescription drugs.
By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent
updated 1:31 PM EDT, Sun October 7, 2012
CNN) -- Jill Thacker was dying for a cup of coffee when she recently ran into a 7-Eleven convenience store. To her pleasant surprise, the coffee was free -- as long as she would commit to drinking it in either a red Mitt Romney cup or a blue Barack Obama cup.
"Which are you going to choose, Mom?" her son asked.
Which, indeed. A gun-owning, big-government-hating Republican, Thacker's every instinct told her to buy a Romney cup. But Thacker, 56, and her daughter have asthma -- a pre-existing condition -- and with Obama as president they'll be guaranteed the ability to buy insurance.
Thacker stood in the 7-Eleven and stared at the red and blue cups, stymied by the choice they represented.
A concrete issue
Perhaps no other election has posed such a difficult personal decision for some conservatives: How do you vote if you're ideologically conservative, but you're benefiting, or stand to benefit, from the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"?
"In 2008, health care was a very conceptual, a very theoretical issue," said Michael Traugott, a professor of political science and communication at the University of Michigan. "This year it's very concrete and real."
Some Republicans told CNN they would never vote Democrat, even though they might benefit from Obamacare, while others said they will switch their vote because of health issues.
"The real question is: Could defections in this group make a difference in states where the race is close, such as Virginia, Ohio or North Carolina?" Traugott said. "I think in those states it's so tight they could make a difference."
Several groups of people would fare very differently under Romney's health care plan than they do under Obamacare, such as those with preexisting conditions, which can range from anything from back pain to cancer. Between 20% and 50% of all Americans have a preexisting condition, according to the Department of Health and Human Services [ http://www.healthcare.gov/law/resources/reports/preexisting.html ].
Obamacare tells insurance companies they can't say no to people with preexisting conditions, or charge them more because of their health issues. According to his website [ http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/06/health/republicans-conflicted-obamacare/ ], Romney's health plan calls for "preventing discrimination" against people with preexisting conditions as long as they've maintained continuous insurance coverage in the past, but does not define what "continuous coverage" means.
Young Republicans could also fare differently under Romney's plan. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, some 3.1 million young adults now have health insurance [ http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2011/youngadultsaca/ib.shtml ] because of Obamacare, which requires insurance companies to allow young adults to stay on their parents' policies up until the age of 26. Before Obamacare, insurance companies in many states took young people off their parents' policies at age 18 or 19.
Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare. In the presidential debate, the former Massachusetts governor said the "private marketplace" is already taking care of young adults who want to stay on their parents' plans so the United States doesn't need a government mandate.
However, it's not clear that insurance companies will allow young adults to stay on their parents' insurance up until age 26 without a mandate. If Obamacare is reversed, insurance companies "will make their own decisions about the coverage options they provide," according to a statement from America's Health Insurance Plans.
'I feel torn'
Jon Campbell may become one of the Republican "defectors" Traugott says could make a difference in battleground states.
Campbell, 49, has voted Republican in nearly every presidential election since he cast his vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, but this year might be different. For two years his 22-year-old stepdaughter, a self-employed dog trainer, didn't have health insurance. Then Obamacare kicked in and she was allowed onto her father's insurance.
"If something had happened to her during those two years it would have been a disaster," Campbell says.
The Olathe, Kansas, resident is leaning toward Obama, but not just because of his stepdaughter. Campbell's wife, Barbara, has diabetes and is in the final stages of breast cancer treatment. She's now on his insurance, but if he ever lost his job, his wife would be faced with trying to buy insurance on her own and would surely be rejected.
"I'm really torn," he said. "Because of Obama, I now have a wife who can get covered. But really, at heart, I'm a limited-government kind of guy."
Campbell said if the election were held today, he'd vote for Obama, but not without a lot of reservations.
"It's really an intriguing conundrum," he said.
'I'm born to be a Republican'
Like Campbell, Sara Nicastro feels conflicted about her vote. A popular diabetes blogger [ http://momentsofwonderful.com/ ], Nicastro, 31, knew a woman who stopped taking her insulin regularly when she lost her insurance, and Nicastro thinks it might have contributed to her death. Nicastro said she herself would be "in a pickle" if she were ever laid off because insurance companies don't want to offer policies to diabetics.
Still, Nicastro, a lifelong Republican who lives in south Florida, will vote for Romney in November. She cares about other issues besides health -- most notably the economy -- and she's voted Republican in every election. She even remembers the excitement she felt when she shook Bob Dole's hand at a rally at her high school 16 years ago.
"The Republican party most closely matches the things I value and the beliefs I have," she said. "I'm pretty passionate about it."
Katherine Weaver, who also has diabetes, hasn't considered voting for Obama for even a minute.
"I'm born to be a Republican," she said.
Weaver, 52, knows it would be difficult if not impossible to buy insurance on her own because of her disease, but she said she's not worried because she has good insurance through her job as a public school teacher in Dallas, where she's worked for 20 years.
"It's very hard to get rid of teachers," she said. "I'm very protective of my job. I document everything I do."
A choice to make
Jill Thacker felt "weird" as she stood there in the 7-11 in Sanford, Florida, thinking about which cup to take.
She thought about her insurance, which covers her only if "I get hit by a bus." It's the only insurance she can afford given her preexisting condition.
She thought about how she's still paying off a $22,000 emergency room bill from last year.
She thought about her 25-year-old daughter, who's on her father's insurance only because of Obamacare.
But she also thought about how, in many fundamental ways, she just doesn't like Obama.
Then she reached for the blue cup with Obama's name on it.
"I really do feel conflicted," she said. "But for me, it's all about health care. It's my number one thing."
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/06/health/republicans-conflicted-obamacare/index.html [with comments]
by Jesse Taylor
7:17 pm October 11, 2012
Mitt Romney, in his relentless effort to win over the liberal media by telling them strings of words that make it sound like he’s thinking, talked to the Columbus Dispatch yesterday [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html ] about healthcare. Perhaps the most controversial part of Romney’s healthcare plan (haha, we kid, Romney has no plan) is getting rid of Obamacare’s preexisting guarantee coverage. How, then, will Romney deal with that?
Romney, in a meeting with The Dispatch’s editorial board, said those who currently don’t carry insurance would have a chance to make a “choice” to be covered without fear of being denied. But he didn’t specify how long Americans would have to make that choice, or what would happen to those who chose not to be covered and later fell sick.
This is a rather smart way of dealing with people who have preexisting conditions on a particular date, then laughing at everyone else who didn’t discover their liver cancer until after Mitt Romney said it was okay. But what about everyone else? What if I decide to metastasize my tumor later on? Never fear, there’s a plan there, too!
Romney minimized the harm for Americans left without health insurance.
“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re 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 it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”
No, really, he said that. Nobody dies in their apartment anymore because they don’t have health insurance. Well, 45,000 a year do [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/17/us-usa-healthcare-deaths-idUSTRE58G6W520090917 ], but not in their apartments. Their landlords obviously call an ambulance to get them to the hospital so they can die with some goddamn dignity. This is America, after all.
What’s the best about Romney’s plan is that it’s designed as a punishment for people who wait around until they get sick and then demand reasonably priced healthcare. If you have a preexisting condition, you’re covered so long as you were covered while you had the condition and never, ever lost coverage for any reason – and the only reason anyone in America would lose coverage after any illness is pure grift and laziness.
After all, Ann Romney has a chronic disease and never lost her job of mothering. That’s dedication.
©2012 Wonkette Media LLC
http://wonkette.com/486527/mitt-romney-none-of-you-poors-die-i-think [with comments]
--
Yes, Mr. Romney, Americans die for lack of insurance
October 11, 2012
http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/yes-mr-romney-americans-die-lack-insurance/
--
FactCheck: What’s Romney’s Plan for Preexisting Conditions?
Oct. 11, 2012
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/FactCheck_Whats_Romneys_Plan_for_Preexisting_Conditions.html?viewAll=y
--
Mitt Romney makes eloquent case for Obamacare
By Greg Sargent
Posted at 05:03 PM ET, 10/11/2012
Mitt Romney did an interview with the Columbus Dispatch [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html ] that’s getting a fair amount [ http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/11/990281/romney-uninsured-hospital/ ] of attention today [ http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/11/14370826-romney-sticks-to-ridiculous-emergency-room-argument ] because he repeated his argument that the uninsured can always get care in emergency rooms.
It was pretty bad. But there’s another part of the interview I wanted to flag, in which Romney inadvertently made an eloquent case for Obamacare, in a way that’s revealing about his own approach to policy. Romney, who would repeal Obamacare, claimed he too would like to come up with a way of covering those with preexisting conditions, as the health law does, but added there’s a problem with so doing:
“You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance,” said Romney, who favors letting states craft their own plans.
“But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance.
“It’d be the same thing as saying, ‘Look, you’re not required to have homeowners insurance, but if your home catches fire, then you can get insurance at that point.’ That wouldn’t make a lot of sense.”
This is precisely why Obamacare has an individual mandate: Without one, it’s not feasible to require insurance companies to cover those with preexisting conditions, because it would lead people to only get insurance after they have gotten sick.
Note that Romney here says that covering those without insurance is a desirable policy goal. And yet he is vowing to repeal the law that is designed to remedy the very problem that he himself identified as an obstacle to carrying out that goal. Heck, he came up with the same remedy for this problem himself as Governor of Massachusetts.
Romney, of course, would say that he objects to Obamacare because it contains a federal mandate. Indeed, his advisers have suggested he favors states stepping in and protecting those with preexisting conditions. But this would require mandates for the same reasons. And Romney is not willing to say (these days, at least) that he thinks other states should broadly adopt mandates, either, because it would infuriate the GOP base, which has hated mandates ever since Obama adopted his.
More broadly, Romney has been badly misleading the public about his intentions towards those with preexisting conditions. When he’s talking to millions of people on television, he says his plan would protect them. Afterwards, when reporters start asking for clarification, his aides confirm that this would only apply to those with continuous coverage. At that point, of course, no one is listening anymore.
This latest iteration is even more absurd. Romney said we should take steps to cover the uninsured. But he then confirmed he would not compel insurance companies to cover many of those with preexisting conditions, correctly identifying the problems that would create. In so doing, he inadvertently made an eloquent case for the very solution to the problem that he would do away with, without coming up with any replacement solution of his own, even though the problem afflicts millions of Americans.
© 2012 The Washington Post (emphasis in original)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/mitt-romney-makes-eloquent-case-for-obamacare/2012/10/11/f5f2e2fc-13db-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_blog.html [with comments]
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Mitt Romney's Hospital Comment 'Frightening' To Uninsured Woman
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, gestures during a rally in Richmond, Va., on Friday Oct. 12.
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
By Arthur Delaney
Posted: 10/12/2012 2:27 pm EDT Updated: 10/12/2012 4:13 pm EDT
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says that thanks to hospitals, Americans who lack health insurance don't have it so bad.
"We don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance, we just say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack,'" Romney told The Columbus Dispatch on Wednesday [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/10/11/health-care-called-choice.html ], explaining why repealing President Obama's health care reform law would not result in catastrophe for sick people who can't buy insurance.
"No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital," Romney continued. "We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance."
Lianne Valenti said she finds Romney's comment "frightening."
Valenti, who is 47 and lives in Long Beach, Calif., knows what Romney's talking about better than Romney does, thanks to firsthand experience. She lost her job last year, and her health insurance along with it. In the fall, she started feeling mild chest pains. Researching online, she figured the problem was gallstones. She tried cheap alternative remedies instead of going to the doctor.
The spasms of pain got worse and worse, until one night in January it became unbearable. "I was sitting here in my chair and it lasted for two hours," Valenti told The Huffington Post at the time [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/unemployment-the-bad-thin_n_1236497.html ]. "It was all I could do to breathe. I couldn't open my eyes."
She had a friend take her to the hospital, where she said doctors told her she'd suffered a heart attack and almost died.
"If I had had my insurance I would have gone to the doctor in October," Valenti said. "The pain was unbearable. I've never had pain like that, and I've had three children."
She received a $79,000 bill, but she said the hospital has negotiated reasonably -- meaning it will eat some of the cost of her emergency treatment, and some of the cost will be passed along to other patients in the form of higher prices.
Before he became the Republican presidential nominee and vowed to repeal President Obama's health care law, Romney often bemoaned the cost [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/23/mitt-romney-60-minutes-health-care_n_1908129.html ] of treating uninsured people in emergency rooms.
"When they show up at the hospital, they get care," Romney said in 2007. "They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is."
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney championed a health care law requiring state residents to buy insurance while subsidizing the cost for poorer people. Romney's law, which has reduced emergency rooms visits [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/massachusetts-health-care-law_n_1645691.html ], served as a blueprint for Obamacare.
Numerous studies have suggested [ http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/romney-says-people-dont-die-because-they-lack-insurance----heres-why-hes-wrong.php ] that thousands of Americans die prematurely every year for lack of health insurance. Nearly 50 million [ http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb12-172.html ] are uninsured.
Romney's comment brought to Valenti's mind the recently reported death [ http://www.lbpost.com/news/2000000802-breaking-body-of-deceased-woman-found-downtown-no-foul-play-suspected ] of an apparently homeless woman outside city hall in Long Beach. Police called it an "undetermined death," according to the Long Beach Post.
In an email on Thursday, Valenti said, "The truth is she died because she couldn't afford to live, which should never happen in America."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/mitt-romney-hospital-uninsured_n_1961701.html [with comments]
--
Longtime Republicans torn between party loyalty and Obamacare
Jill Thacker and her daughter, JJ Thacker, share asthma medicine, since Jill's insurance doesn't pay for prescription drugs.
By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent
updated 1:31 PM EDT, Sun October 7, 2012
CNN) -- Jill Thacker was dying for a cup of coffee when she recently ran into a 7-Eleven convenience store. To her pleasant surprise, the coffee was free -- as long as she would commit to drinking it in either a red Mitt Romney cup or a blue Barack Obama cup.
"Which are you going to choose, Mom?" her son asked.
Which, indeed. A gun-owning, big-government-hating Republican, Thacker's every instinct told her to buy a Romney cup. But Thacker, 56, and her daughter have asthma -- a pre-existing condition -- and with Obama as president they'll be guaranteed the ability to buy insurance.
Thacker stood in the 7-Eleven and stared at the red and blue cups, stymied by the choice they represented.
A concrete issue
Perhaps no other election has posed such a difficult personal decision for some conservatives: How do you vote if you're ideologically conservative, but you're benefiting, or stand to benefit, from the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"?
"In 2008, health care was a very conceptual, a very theoretical issue," said Michael Traugott, a professor of political science and communication at the University of Michigan. "This year it's very concrete and real."
Some Republicans told CNN they would never vote Democrat, even though they might benefit from Obamacare, while others said they will switch their vote because of health issues.
"The real question is: Could defections in this group make a difference in states where the race is close, such as Virginia, Ohio or North Carolina?" Traugott said. "I think in those states it's so tight they could make a difference."
Several groups of people would fare very differently under Romney's health care plan than they do under Obamacare, such as those with preexisting conditions, which can range from anything from back pain to cancer. Between 20% and 50% of all Americans have a preexisting condition, according to the Department of Health and Human Services [ http://www.healthcare.gov/law/resources/reports/preexisting.html ].
Obamacare tells insurance companies they can't say no to people with preexisting conditions, or charge them more because of their health issues. According to his website [ http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/06/health/republicans-conflicted-obamacare/ ], Romney's health plan calls for "preventing discrimination" against people with preexisting conditions as long as they've maintained continuous insurance coverage in the past, but does not define what "continuous coverage" means.
Young Republicans could also fare differently under Romney's plan. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, some 3.1 million young adults now have health insurance [ http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2011/youngadultsaca/ib.shtml ] because of Obamacare, which requires insurance companies to allow young adults to stay on their parents' policies up until the age of 26. Before Obamacare, insurance companies in many states took young people off their parents' policies at age 18 or 19.
Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare. In the presidential debate, the former Massachusetts governor said the "private marketplace" is already taking care of young adults who want to stay on their parents' plans so the United States doesn't need a government mandate.
However, it's not clear that insurance companies will allow young adults to stay on their parents' insurance up until age 26 without a mandate. If Obamacare is reversed, insurance companies "will make their own decisions about the coverage options they provide," according to a statement from America's Health Insurance Plans.
'I feel torn'
Jon Campbell may become one of the Republican "defectors" Traugott says could make a difference in battleground states.
Campbell, 49, has voted Republican in nearly every presidential election since he cast his vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, but this year might be different. For two years his 22-year-old stepdaughter, a self-employed dog trainer, didn't have health insurance. Then Obamacare kicked in and she was allowed onto her father's insurance.
"If something had happened to her during those two years it would have been a disaster," Campbell says.
The Olathe, Kansas, resident is leaning toward Obama, but not just because of his stepdaughter. Campbell's wife, Barbara, has diabetes and is in the final stages of breast cancer treatment. She's now on his insurance, but if he ever lost his job, his wife would be faced with trying to buy insurance on her own and would surely be rejected.
"I'm really torn," he said. "Because of Obama, I now have a wife who can get covered. But really, at heart, I'm a limited-government kind of guy."
Campbell said if the election were held today, he'd vote for Obama, but not without a lot of reservations.
"It's really an intriguing conundrum," he said.
'I'm born to be a Republican'
Like Campbell, Sara Nicastro feels conflicted about her vote. A popular diabetes blogger [ http://momentsofwonderful.com/ ], Nicastro, 31, knew a woman who stopped taking her insulin regularly when she lost her insurance, and Nicastro thinks it might have contributed to her death. Nicastro said she herself would be "in a pickle" if she were ever laid off because insurance companies don't want to offer policies to diabetics.
Still, Nicastro, a lifelong Republican who lives in south Florida, will vote for Romney in November. She cares about other issues besides health -- most notably the economy -- and she's voted Republican in every election. She even remembers the excitement she felt when she shook Bob Dole's hand at a rally at her high school 16 years ago.
"The Republican party most closely matches the things I value and the beliefs I have," she said. "I'm pretty passionate about it."
Katherine Weaver, who also has diabetes, hasn't considered voting for Obama for even a minute.
"I'm born to be a Republican," she said.
Weaver, 52, knows it would be difficult if not impossible to buy insurance on her own because of her disease, but she said she's not worried because she has good insurance through her job as a public school teacher in Dallas, where she's worked for 20 years.
"It's very hard to get rid of teachers," she said. "I'm very protective of my job. I document everything I do."
A choice to make
Jill Thacker felt "weird" as she stood there in the 7-11 in Sanford, Florida, thinking about which cup to take.
She thought about her insurance, which covers her only if "I get hit by a bus." It's the only insurance she can afford given her preexisting condition.
She thought about how she's still paying off a $22,000 emergency room bill from last year.
She thought about her 25-year-old daughter, who's on her father's insurance only because of Obamacare.
But she also thought about how, in many fundamental ways, she just doesn't like Obama.
Then she reached for the blue cup with Obama's name on it.
"I really do feel conflicted," she said. "But for me, it's all about health care. It's my number one thing."
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/06/health/republicans-conflicted-obamacare/index.html [with comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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