All Things in Moderation

I just don’t see how someone with so many different opinions or statements on one subject can realistically believe he can or even should be President.

A quote from Romney’s book “No Apology”;

After about a year of looking at data — and not making much progress — we had a collective epiphany of sorts, an obvious one, as important observations often are: the people in Massachusetts who didn’t have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care. Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. And our state’s hospitals were offering even more assistance than the federal government required. That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn’t have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did — before acute conditions developed — the cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared.

It’s not as if this interview with Glenn Beck was while he was in college, it was in 2007.

When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism, I don’t know what is,” he said at the time. “So my plan did something quite different. It said, you know what? If people can afford to buy insurance … or if they can pay their own way, then they either buy that insurance or pay their own way, but they no longer look to government to hand out free care. And that, in my opinion, is ultimate conservativism.

And in a 2010 interview on Morning Joe he was asked if he believed in universal health coverage and said;

Oh sure. Look, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way.

And then surprise of surprises last night on 60 Minutes he reversed course.

“Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance,” he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night. “If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.”

h/t Sam Stein & Amanda Terkel

My oldest daughter finally convinced one of her friends to apply for the CA PCIP enacted as part of the ACA. Her friend Sara completely lost the ability to speak and also lost control of many motor skills while in graduate school about three years ago. Her medical insurance expired as she was forced to quit school and was also unemployable. Luckily, her partner was able to support the two of them, but just barely. Sara was unable to purchase health insurance and had no medical diagnosis so was also denied disability.

She has spent the last three years in emergency rooms and trying to get care and a diagnosis through the health department but most tests were denied and no one seemed able to make a diagnosis even though she has gone down hill dramatically in the past three years. At one point the state sent her to a mental health expert as they thought she was making herself sick or something. She now walks with the help of a walker, can no longer drive and barely leaves the house as it’s too much effort.

About a month ago she received her insurance through PCIP and was finally able to see both a GP and the neurologist he sent her to and now has a likely diagnosis and even medication to improve her condition. Her tests were ordered on an emergency status and she was diagnosed with PLS a very rare (only 500 cases in the US) and degenerative form of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s) that is not as deadly or rapidly progressive. There are treatments and while it is debilitating it isn’t a death sentence and can be mitigated while improving her quality of life.

We had a similar experience with our niece who died in 2008. We waited a very long time for her insurance company to approve the tests she needed but the approval never came. Instead she received a notice that her insurance had been terminated. We couldn’t get in to see a neurologist until we could prove we had the money to pay for whatever tests and treatment she might need. We converted our IRA’s to cash and put our rental house on the market but we were too late. While I was on the way to bring her home from Albuquerque to see the neurologist I’d found to treat her she had a seizure and died.

Mitt Romney can’t even seem to figure out if we have an obligation to help people in these circumstances or not.

Filed under: 2012, aca, health insurance, Mitt Romney | 10 Comments »