As Nicole Coulter pointed out yesterday the mainstream media has been feeding rumors for the last several days that Santorum was “quitting the race” and leaving Florida immediately after Thursday night’s debate despite Rick having made it clear that he was continuing to campaign until the night prior to the elections and was nowhere near quitting.
Unfortunately his special-needs daughter, Bella, had been rushed to the hospital and Santorum has rushed there as well. Although he’s canceled his appearances at several events for today, his eldest daughter Elizabeth and members of the famous Duggar family will represent him at various events. He also appeared today on “Meet the Press” and will be holding two tele-town hall meetings later today.
The quitting rumor which is being spread to discourage his supporters from sticking to him, is not the only obvious lie being thrown about Santorum across cyberspace and media channels.
During the debate Thursday night Santorum made a very strong case detailing why Romney, the author of RomneyCare, will have great difficulty taking on Obama on ObamaCare if he is the ultimate nominee. Santorum explained that in order to successfully challenge Obama one must provide a clear contrast to Obama’s policies, and reminded the audience that he had never supported individual mandates. You can watch their exchange over here.
Over the weekend media headlines announced that Santorum too had endorsed individual mandates during his career. The only problem though, was that they all linked to one source which was based on a third party with no direct quotes from Santorum.Well, guess what? Consistent Rick has opposed ObamaCare in concept way back in 1994 and continues to oppose it in 2012. The Daily Caller’s article has found a video dated October 31, 1994 in which Rick Santorum while running for Senate in the purple state of PA had clearly denounced any and every form of individual mandates. Here are some excerpts from The Daily Caller’s article and you can watch the video over here.
Running for the U.S. Senate in 1994, however, Santorum actually said just the opposite of that, as a video from CSPAN shows. The Oct. 31, 1994 video has Santorum saying government shouldn’t “dictate” anything on health care.
“I think what the role of the federal government is to provide opportunity for everyone to get what they want, to live their dreams and not to dictate what everybody should have,” he said.
And he explained why, which is even when certain things are mandated by the federal government, they often don’t work and added it simply is “not the American way of doing things.”
“You can’t force every American to do something they don’t want to do,” Santorum explained. “You can force people to be in Social Security, yet I think it’s only about 96 percent of Americans that are in Social Security. There are lots of mandates we put on people and they don’t obey. That’s wrong. That’s not the American way of doing things. The American way of doing things is getting people to live their dreams to make their choices.”
In April of 2006, Newt Gingrich wrote a note on his organization's website, Center for Health saying "we agree entirely" with Romneycare. He strongly suggested the federal government to model it.
The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts. The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system.
We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100% insurance coverage for all Americans. Individuals without coverage often do not receive quality medical attention on par with those who do have insurance. We also believe strongly that personal responsibility is vital to creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System. Individuals who can afford to purchase health insurance and simply choose not to place an unnecessary burden on a system that is on the verge of collapse; these free-riders undermine the entire health system by placing the onus of responsibility on taxpayers.
The Romney plan attempts to bring everyone into the system. The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage, and subsidies will be made available to those individuals who cannot afford insurance on their own. We agree strongly with this principle, but the details are crucial when it comes to the structure of this plan. Under the new bill, Massachusetts residents earning more than 300% of the federal poverty level (approximately $30,000 for an individual) will not be eligible for any subsidies. State House officials had originally promised that there would be new plans available at about $200 a month, but industry experts are now predicting that the cheapest plan will likely cost at least $325 a month. This estimate totals about $4000 per year, or about 1/5 of a $30,000 annual take-home income.
While in theory the plan should be affordable if the whole state contributes to the cost, the reality is that Massachusetts has an exhaustive list of health coverage regulations prohibiting insurers from offering more basic, pared-down policies with higher deductibles. (This is yet another reminder that America must establish a cross-state insurance market that gives individuals the freedom to shop for insurance plans in states other than their own.)
In our estimation, Massachusetts residents earning little more than $30,000 a year are in jeopardy of being priced out of the system. In the event that this occurs, Governor Romney will be in grave danger of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Mike Dukakis, whose 1988 health plan was hailed as a save-all but eventually collapsed when poorly-devised payment structures created a malaise of unfulfilled promises. We propose that a more realistic approach might be to limit the mandate to those individuals earning upwards of $54,000 per year.
While the Commonwealth’s plan will naturally endure tremendous scrutiny from those who assert that the law will not work as intended, Massachusetts leaders are to be commended for this bipartisan proposal to tackle the enormous challenge of finding real solutions for creating a sustainable health system. I hope that Massachusetts’ initiative to provide affordable, quality health insurance for all continues to ignite even more debate around the subject of how to best address our nation’s uninsured crisis and the critical problems within the health system at large.
On a different note, I am pleased to report that our work on accelerating the Right-to-Know movement continues to build. Leaders in Washington are now demanding that Medicare disclose its data, and CHT is helping to carry the message to the states. During my recent trip to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, our work on accelerating the Right-to-Know movement played a key role. My host in South Dakota was state senator and majority whip Tom Dempster, who is the recognized leader in South Dakota healthcare policy.
Senator Dempster is responsible for passing legislation in 2005 that requires all hospitals in the state to post the prices of their 25 most commonly-performed procedures. The law takes full effect on July 1, 2006, and will be the first of its kind in the country. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader did a poll last year that found 85 percent of South Dakotans supported this law. Senator Dempster said he looks forward to working with CHT to develop transformational ideas relating to Medicaid, health insurance, and their state employee health plan.
Also, last month the Center held a two-day Pandemic Influenza Strategic Simulation with our partner and CHT member, Booz Allen Hamilton. The exercise, hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at their Washington headquarters, was sponsored by MedImmune and Securitas. We were honored to be joined by 150 leaders of pandemic influenza preparedness planning drawn from federal, state, and international government organizations, as well as by business and health sector leaders.
Thanks both to Booz Allen’s excellent facilitation of the event and the insights shared by all who attended, participants have told us that they regarded the event as a great success. We expect to release a report of strategic simulation’s results and findings by the close of this month. (For more information, please contact Robert Egge, the director of CHT’s Health Preparedness and Homeland Security Project, at 202-375-2001 or regge@gingrichgroup.com.)
Finally, I want to take a moment here to challenge the Congress to put forth genuine effort to fix major faults compromising the quality of our health system. The House absolutely must pass a health IT bill this year. Hurricane season is fast approaching – how many lives will be lost this year to our disconnected, paper-based health system?
If this is not enough, here's more.
In 2007, Newt wrote an additional note in which he demanded Congress to take action to ensure every individual has health insurance. Included in his statement is a demand for individual mandates.
In order to make coverage more accessible, Congress must do more, including passing legislation to: establish a national health insurance marketplace by giving individuals the freedom to shop for insurance plans across state lines; provide low-income families with $1,000 in direct contributions to a health savings account, along with a $2,000 advanced tax credit to purchase an HSA-eligible high-deductible health plan; make premiums for these plans tax deductible; provide tax rebates to small businesses that contribute to their employees’ HSAs; extend and expand grant funding to high-risk pools across the country; and require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond.
Michael Dukakis lost the 1988 presidential bid because of his liberal beliefs; he lost in a landslide because of a single reply to a question at one of the debates.
”If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”
Dukakis replied with a cold no and reiterated his stance against the death penalty, ultimately portraying him as soft on crime thus marking the end of his candidacy.
I am explicitly not comparing Dukakis to Romney, though I am drawing a comparison of Dukakis’s reply and the effect of it to a reply Romney made at the debate last Thursday.
Romney, if and when defeated, will lose because of his support of many liberal issues and flip flops. The defining moment which may cause a landslide loss, may have already occurred. August 11th at the Iowa Republican debate, Romney responded to Pawlenty’s attack of Obamneycare, that Obamacare and Romneycare are equal, in the following manner:
ROMNEY:There are some similarities between what we did in Massachusetts and what President Obama did, but there are some big differences. And one is, I believe in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. And that says that powers not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved by the states and the people.
We put together a plan that was right for Massachusetts. The president took the power of the people and the states away from them and put in place a one-size-fits-all plan. It’s bad law. It’s bad constitutional law. It’s bad medicine. And if I’m president of the United States, on my first day, I’ll direct the secretary of HHS to grant a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states.
WALLACE: But, Governor — and this is — this is your one-minute question. Do you think that government at any level has the right to make someone buy a good or service just because they are a U.S.mresident? Where do you find that authority, that mandating authority, government making an individual buy a good or service in the Constitution?
ROMNEY: And let — and let me tell you — where do I find it in the constitution? Are you familiar with the Massachusetts constitution? I am. And the Massachusetts constitution allows states, for instance, to say that our kids have to go to school. It has that power.
Oh. So Obamacare is bad because the federal government is imposing on all citizens of all fifty states to purchase health care. On the other hand, Romneycare is good because it imposed health care mandates only on all the districts and all the citizens of the single state of Massachusetts. And Obamacare is wrong because the tenth amendment in the federal constitution bans it while Romneycare is good because the state constitution allows it. Got it? So if he could only find some loophole to impose his will on all the people of the entire country, then he’d go for it without any doubts.
Yes, the constitution limits the control of the federal government. The reason the founding fathers have done so was not to limit their own power; they had no intention to expand the size of government. It was done as a measure of safeguarding the freedom of the people of future corrupt politicians.
At a time of too much government, do we need a president who wants to limit and shrink the size of government regardless of what’s written in the constitution, or do we need a politician who has expanded the size of government to the greatest degree permitted according to the state constitution?
And have you noticed his example of kids being forced to attend school? Firstly, isn’t homeschooling an option? (MA happens to be one of the only two states which require parents to obtain approval prior to homeschooling but parents still have the option.) Additionally, education is provided by the government at no cost to the recipients (tax-funded of course!) Most importantly, has Romney decided to extend the “kid” aspect onto all citizens with the government playing the role of the “parent” forcing its “kids” how to live their lives?
All voters should be infuriated to discover that Mitt Romney’s only reason for not snatching your freedom is because it’s forbidden according to the constitution. I am a young writer and will admit that I’m not familiar with the constitution of Massachusetts. But if a candidate runs as a conservative and the only issue he has of stripping citizens from their freedom is if it’s permitted according to the constitution, then how can such a candidate claim to serve in the interest of the people?
And although it’s difficult to believe that the constitution of Massachusetts explicitly allows the government to force its citizens to purchase something, with liberals in control anything may be possible.
