Romney Talks Health Care

Written by Sam on August 23rd, 2007

 

His own plan is a blend of tax incentives, creative financing to help the uninsured without raising taxes or federal spending, and a state-based system that would depend on governors to fix the country’s health-care problems.

Romney insisted his plan would eventually help everyone get insurance. But he will not propose requiring everyone in the country to get insurance — as he did in Massachusetts.

“We’ll get all the way there, but it’s not through a mandate,” he said. “If some states were going to drag their heels, I’m not going to have the federal government step in.”

To help control costs, Romney would allow all Americans to deduct from their taxable income all of their health-care costs — including premiums and most out-of-pocket spending. Now, only people with a lot of expenses can deduct the cost from their taxable income.

That, said Romney, would provide a tax incentive to buy high-deductible, low- premium health-care plans. And that, he said, would lead people to spend less and make better, cheaper choices in buying health care. Overall spending on health care would drop by 6.2 percent, he estimated.

“You get better behavior in health care,” he said.

To help the uninsured, Romney would provide a package aimed at helping some people into existing government programs, driving down the costs of private health insurance and subsidies.

McClatchy

Romney says he can get the poor insured by helping them into existing government programs, but earlier in the article he was quoted as saying he can accomplish this without increasing spending or raising taxes.  How is that possible if more people are going to be on existing government programs?

1 Comments so far ↓

  1. Aug
    25
    7:41
    AM
    George Kannofly

    Romney says he can get the poor insured by helping them into existing government programs, but earlier in the article he was quoted as saying he can accomplish this without increasing spending or raising taxes. How is that possible if more people are going to be on existing government programs?”

    Currently the un-insured (i won’t call them poor) have universal healthcare that we all pay for, and no one else has it! Everytime an un-insured enters the emergency room we pay the premium. If you reduce those premiums by paying them before the member enters the emergency room, otherwise known as health insurance, you re-allocate the pool of funds currently being spent and wasted in a more efficient and equitable way.

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