Either way, we should take him at his word, as he has never said things just to get elected before. Just look at You Tube, he has been very consistent.

Also, he is not known for flip-flopping.

Plus, as a moderate progressive (Romney’s words not mine), he will be dedicated to Conservative values.

So which Willard are you working for?
The one for TARP or against it?
For abortion or against abortion?
Banning guns or 2nd amendment supporter?
For his own socialized medicine or against it?

Good luck and good bowling.

A neurosurgeon called Levin on the way back from a meeting in DC on Obamacare. He states that it is not known by the public yet but but at the age of 70 a person who presents at the emergency room with a brain bleed will only be given “comfort care,” That is, Strokes will not be treated!

Not only that persons are not called patients; we are call “UNITS!” Ethics panels, will get together and decide what type of care will be approved and NOBODY over 70 will be approved. This information was provided to the neurosurgeon by HHS.

So what do you all think? Do you trust Romney to get rid of Obamacare? Last I heard he said he was going to fix it. That is both before and after he said he was going to repeal it…all in the same month.

If he wins the nomination…he will have my vote…and nothing more….I won’t spend this election being berated and brow beaten about supporting the nominee…I will go silent….I will vote for the bum…but that’s it.

My integrity means something to me….it has value…I will NOT sell it or give it away defending Romney and that video says all that needs be said about why!

We get a status quo Republican party for four years, possibly eight if the country doesn’t turn on Romney in his first term. But after eight years of status quo, the nation most definitely will be in the mood to go Dem, change for change’s sake.

And so where does that leave conservatives? We’ll have to wait another decade before we really get a chance to change Washington!

Look at the way the Romney crowd has returned to comment on RedState, flooding the board with talking points straight from Romney Central. I do think it’s kind of strange there’s no way to take Romney on without being labeled as a Leftist, but the Establishment has thought their strategy through, give them that much. They just don’t have a real plan for the future.

In my opinion, RomneyCare is vastly better than ObamaCare primarily in that the latter is a nationwide program that bars states from trying different innovative approaches, while also exceeding the constitutional powers of Congress. ?Additionally, as I understand it, ObamaCare grabbed half a trillion dollars from Medicare, thus jeopardizing the elderly. ?In terms of making a bureaucratic mess, it seems like Romney’s 70-page bill was much less onerous than Obama’s??2,700-page bill.

You mention the “iron fist” of the federal government controlling?Medicaid, SChip, VA, and the 800-pound gorilla -Medicare, but hasn’t Romney explicitly said that he wants to take that federal money and send it back to the states so they can directly control those programs?

If someone has a heart attack, or cancer, or the like then they ought to get life-saving treatment. ?I’m not sure why that wasn’t already covered in Massachusetts pre-Romney under MediCare as a last resort, which is why I am not crazy about RomneyCare. ?But there there do seem to be huge differences between ObamaCare and RomneyCare, including that the former is illegal.

The bottom line is that there aren’t enough substantial differences between the two in order to rationalize support for one (Romneycare) but visceral opposition to the other (obamacare). Either you believe that an unencumbered free market drives down costs and that more mandates and third-party programs drive up costs, or you believe, as Obama does, that more intervention is the way to go. Romneycare is completely premised on the latter.

By all accounts, health insurance premiums in Mass. have skyrocketed as a result of MassCare. So it is actually these gov’t interventions that make insurance unaffordable and “help lose decades from people’s lives”. In order to save those who suffer from such gov’t-induced price increases, Romneycare and Obamacare dump so many people on Medicaid.

In order to understand the way forward, we need to learn why healtcare and health insurance is so expensive? On the healthcare side, a big part of it is tort problems. On the insurance side, it is the lack of a free-market. It is these very policies of guaranteed issue, community rating, restrictions on purchasing across state lines that are distorting the marker and driving up the cost of insurance. We need to move away from them, not double down on them, as Romney and Obama have done.

The reason why states have a difficult time dealing with this issue is because they are precluded by the government, which runs most of healthcare (even before Obamacare) with an iron fist; Medicaid, SChip, VA, and the 800-pound gorilla -Medicare. There is not much a state can do when the largest drivers and movers of healthcare policy and costs are inexorably driving up costs. We need reform from the federal level in which we subsidize a voucher program (or, at the very least, premium support) for Medicare and veterans healthcare. This will open the biggest drivers of healthcare spending up to market forces and create downward pressure on prices.

Nothing is free in life, and certainly, the best healthcare in the world cannot and should not be free. But only free-market reforms will make the cost somewhat manageable. for the remaining people who can’t afford it. we should have one safety net program that works similar to food stamps. Instead of a third-party market-distorter like Medicaid, we should give them medical stamps to purchase private insurance. But either way, the overarching goal should not be dependency; we should structure the program to encourage people to become more independent.

Remaining reforms would include modifying the medicare payroll tax to go into HSAs, leveling the playing field between employer-based insurance and personal insurance by either offering both tax credits – or neither.

There are many other free-market ideas, but the federal gov’t must act first so states can be free to experiment. What Romney did is 180 degrees the opposite of prudent market-based reform.

I think you are right in the sense that healthcare costs are very high -to high. Republicans need to do a better job articulating and empathizing with those who suffer from the costs. They must do so, not by mimicking Obama’s failed socialist interventions, but by showing how it is those very policies that have engendered the problem in the first place.

I’ll have more on free-market healthcare in the coming days.