The Etch-A-Sketch moment has arrived

[Ed W]

Remember how Mitt Romney would have benefited from the Ryan tax plan, cutting his rate from around 13% down to 2%?  Remember how he said that a 10:1 ratio of spending cuts to new spending plans was unacceptable?  Remember how he said that his first act in office would be to repeal Obamacare?

As it turns out, he didn't really mean all that.  This weekend, he announced that he'd keep some parts of the Affordable Health Care Act.  And those tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't happen.  In fact, he'd eliminate deductions and close loopholes, though in keeping with his capacity for obfuscation, he didn't specify what deductions and loopholes.  Even Paul Ryan admitted the 10:1 ratio isn't set in stone, though it depends on the "quality" of those spending decisions.

Neither candidate offers specifics, saying only that by closing loopholes for the very wealthy they'll be able to offer tax cuts for the rest of us.  But those loopholes and deductions all have numbers associated with them, numbers that, if we apply advanced mathematics like, say, addition, can be compared to the amount of money they propose to offer in tax cuts.  So far those numbers, like Romney's tax returns, are largely imaginary.

Here's Ryan and Stephanopoulus in the Washington Post:

Stephanopoulos pressed Ryan for specifics. "Don't voters have a right — to know which loopholes you're going to go after?" he asked.

...Ryan dismissed the idea that the plan is a secret one. "What we don't want is a secret plan," he said, and added: "We want to have this debate in the public. We want to have this debate with Congress. And we want to do this with the consent of the elected representatives of the people and figure out what loopholes should stay or go and who should or should not get them."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/09/paul-ryan-says-plan-to-tax-loopholes-not-a-secret-but-he-is-short-on-specifics/

The assumption is that voters have the attention span of gnats.  Didn't they criticize Kerry incessantly for being "for it before he was against it?" That was then.  We've reached the Etch-A-Sketch moment when the Romney/Ryan campaign has to make that turn away from the far right and its extremists toward those moderate voters who will decide the election.  Let's remind those moderates - incessantly - of Romney's plan that goes without any details or explanation, yet is somehow not secret.  By this definition, Nixon's secret plan to end the war in Vietnam by bombing a neutral country wasn't secret either.  He told us he had a plan, after all.

316/221

[TulsaRufnex]

[TulsaRufnex]

SHHH.  Mitt Romney will be executing a front-arial Meet the Press flip with a BuzzFeed double twist...

Romney Will Insure Pre-Existing Conditions, Aide Says
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/romney-will-insure-pre-existing-conditions-aide-s

After Mitt Romney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that there were certain parts of Obamacare that he liked, a campaign aide confirmed to BuzzFeed that one of the elements that a Romney health care overhaul would be a guarantee that people with pre-existing conditions can't get kicked off their health insurance plans.

"Gov. Romney will ensure that discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage is prohibited," the aide said.

But the 2010 health care law goes much further: It bars discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions who are applying for health care.

The new statement appears to amend a report in National Review Online earlier Sunday, which quoted an anonymous aide saying Romney would allow "the martketplace" to sort out coverage for such people.

The aide pointed to an occasion earlier this summer when Romney firmly staked out support for insuring people with pre-existing conditions in the context of a bill he says will "replace" ObamaCare.

"I also want to make sure that people can't get dropped if they have a preexisting condition," Romney said in a June speech. "So let's say someone has been continuously insured and they develop a serious condition and let's say they lose their job or they change jobs, they move and they go to a new place."

The Romney campaign position, as it stands, appears to be repealing the sweeping ObamaCare protections for uninsured people with pre-existing conditions, and replacing them with a market-based plan.

OMG, did he just throw in an Arabian?    

[Red Arrow]

Romney Will Insure Pre-Existing Conditions, Aide Says

As we move from Health Care Insurance to Health Care, (I know I am being picky about words but I believe it is important in this case.) Pre-existing conditions will need to be covered.  They actually already are covered if you have continuous coverage (including COBRA) from a previous employer.  Picking up a lot of new subscribers with existing conditions will not be less expensive.  Lots of companies have tried to make up for a loss with volume but it doesn't work.

I had to get my mother to the emergency room twice for excessive nose bleeds recently.  The bill to the insurance company was over $10,000.  I can only imagine the havoc that would put on someone without insurance.  We need to do something but I am not convinced that "Obamacare" is the solution.

[cynical]

As we move from Health Care Insurance to Health Care, (I know I am being picky about words but I believe it is important in this case.) Pre-existing conditions will need to be covered.  They actually already are covered if you have continuous coverage (including COBRA) from a previous employer.  Picking up a lot of new subscribers with existing conditions will not be less expensive.  Lots of companies have tried to make up for a loss with volume but it doesn't work.

I had to get my mother to the emergency room twice for excessive nose bleeds recently.  The bill to the insurance company was over $10,000.  I can only imagine the havoc that would put on someone without insurance.  We need to do something but I am not convinced that "Obamacare" is the solution.

This is a special case in which the large number of people who are not paying for health care has increased the costs on everyone else. "Obamacare" is functionally identical to "Romneycare" as it was enacted in Massachusetts. The idea in both plans is that if you broaden the risk pool, with low risk as well as higher risk participants paying, the coat per partipant will decline. Our current health care system is being grossly distorted by free riders. "Obamacare" is actually a very conservative, market based approach to this problem, with some adjustments also found in the "Romneycare" plan to deal with pre-existing conditions and adult children.

The radical part is the individual mandate. You already know that the individual mandate is there to broaden the risk pool and to prevent individuals from avoiding coverage until they have a serious condition.

[erfalf]

How come I never hear stories of Obama's flip-flopping? Oh, I remember, when Obama changes his mind, he is evolving. Romney is a flip-flopper.

[RecycleMichael]

Romney is a flip-flopper.

Glad to see you finally come around.

[erfalf]

Glad to see you finally come around.

They are all flip-floppers. Most politicians of that caliber would probably sell their own mother's if it guaranteed a win.

[Ed W]

As we move from Health Care Insurance to Health Care, (I know I am being picky about words but I believe it is important in this case.) Pre-existing conditions will need to be covered.  They actually already are covered if you have continuous coverage (including COBRA) from a previous employer. 

This is the situation that Mary and I are facing.  We both have medical conditions, and in her case, it's sufficient for insurance companies to deny her coverage.  I had a hard time getting life insurance when my old policy expired.  So if I retire, we have to find affordable medical coverage.

AA says that we can continue our existing plan under COBRA - for just under $1000 per month.  Sure, we could do that if we didn't need to eat or have a roof over our heads.  When I hired in, I agreed to pay toward retirement medical insurance from the very first day.  It was supposed to see us from my retirement date until we were both on Medicare, but AA decided to drop it.  Soon I'll get my money back plus whatever interest it earned.  Big whoop.  I'd rather have the insurance.

The company is offering an early out package, but I won't take it.  Instead, I have to hope that the changes coming in 2014 under the Affordable Health Care Act will see that we're covered.  And if we're not covered, I'll keep working.   That's not a bitter pill to swallow as I actually enjoy the work, but it's the BS rolling from management that's truly annoying.

It's easy to argue about health care in the abstract, but it's much harder when it's close and personal.

[TulsaRufnex]

How come I never hear stories of Obama's flip-flopping? Oh, I remember, when Obama changes his mind, he is evolving. Romney is a flip-flopper.

Because he's NOT a flip-flopper.  Too compromising?  IMO, yes.  Too professorial when he's not in "campaign mode?"  I'll agree with that assessment, as well.

In fact, I'm upset that Obamacare has an individual mandate after Obama was against it during the campaign... I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney in 2008, yet "Obamacare" is much closer to those two proposals... and just as there are public colleges of many shapes and sizes available right now in higher education, I believe there should have been PUBLIC OPTIONS available in healthcare for people like me who couldn't afford COBRA after I lost my job and am stuck in my 40s with a pre-existing condition, freeloader that I am...  

But Mitt Romney?  He's more of a "flip-flopper" than John Kerry ever was.... take almost every single hot button issue of our time and he's been on opposite sides-- abortion, gun control, gay rights, global warming, immigration?.... I'd like to see a debate between 90s Romney and the 2012 "severely-conservative" Romney... and now "severely-conservative" Romney is giving all sorts of mixed signals after choosing Ryan as VP and running away from Ryan's budget proposals....

14 Bald-Faced Mitt Romney Flip-Flops That Were Dug Up By John McCain
Michael Brendan Dougherty   | Jan. 18, 2012
http://www.businessinsider.com/14-bald-faced-mitt-romney-flip-flops-that-were-dug-up-by-john-mccain-2012-1?op=1  

I thought the Paul Ryan-Joe Biden debate would be a great contrast.... except I bet the Romney campaign keeps such a tight leash on Ryan that he toes the Romney line to the point where he hides from his own positions... go figure.

With flip-flop jab, John Kerry turns the tables on Mitt Romney
Print | Comments (0) Posted by Rob Anderson  September 7, 2012
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/blogs/the_angle/2012/09/with_flip-flop.html

[TulsaRufnex]

It's easy to argue about health care in the abstract, but it's much harder when it's close and personal.

+1

[Hoss]

I should have posted this in here probably instead of a new thread:

http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/index.php?topic=19450.msg250894;topicseen#msg250894

[AquaMan]

In all the conversations about the Affordable Care Act, known to republicans as ObamaCare, I somehow missed where the original ideas came from. I watched a documentary about Romney recently and it mentioned that the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that republicans so cherish, was the original source of the main tenets of the act. Romney used the idea with full support of the party till Obama basically copied it. Then of course it was smile on a stick.

Is that true?

[nathanm]

Is that true?

That's the gist of it. I don't think the Heritage Foundation was in support of a medical loss ratio requirement or expanding Medicaid, though.

[erfalf]

That's the gist of it. I don't think the Heritage Foundation was in support of a medical loss ratio requirement or expanding Medicaid, though.

That is correct, more or less. It is the idea from which Romneycare was created, and Obamacare was based off of it. Not word for word, but similar.