Two recent Pawlenty interviews. In the first, from last night, Pawlenty wades once more into the healthcare debate, specifically clarifying his criticisms of Masscare (and Romney). In the second, he addresses Palin’s resignation.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWia2rrL0No[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpKXOVZDIzc[/youtube]
Any thoughts on his proposed reforms to healthcare? I’m in almost total agreement, but I think he’s probably wrong on the pre-existing conditions reform. If he means that insurance companies should have to insure those with pre-existing conditions…well, that’s a debatable but plausible reform proposal. It would be absolute mistake, however, to require insurance companies to offer the same rates to those with pre-existing conditions. The Massachusetts plan, which Pawlenty rightly derides, shows the folly of this approach. Because the Massachusetts market doesn’t penalize individuals for pre-existing conditions, folks are waiting until they get sick to purchase insurance, running up a variety of medical expenses over a few months, and then dropping the coverage and paying the fees the plan imposes.
A genuine free market would adequately punish people for not getting insurance BEFORE they get sick, by charging them higher premiums for…yes, pre-existing conditions. A market which did this efficiently enough- wedded to certain government reforms- could mitigate some of the adverse selection difficulties without the heavy restraints of Obamacare or Masscare. For instance, what if, in addition to allowing insurance companies to charge higher rates for most pre-existing conditions, the government offered tax credits of some sort to folks who’d owned an insurance policy (any insurance policy) for a certain percentage of their adult life? So a 25 year old male, looking to logically hold off on insurance until it makes financial sense (i.e, until the actuarial tables start putting him at risk for various expensive things), will have dual incentives to sign up early; he won’t end up paying higher rates if he gets sick, and he’ll get money back every year for being a “consistent” contributer” to the health insurance system.
July 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
So I wanted to watch the videos, but they kept pausing every few seconds for more download time. Much too annoying to wade through.
July 29th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Bravo to Pawlenty. A real conservative who will stand up to RINO Romneycare.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Forcing insurers to take pre-existing conditions without charging that group higher premiums is obviously going to drive up premiums for everyone. I don’t see any way around that if that is what Congress is going to do.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I first read Masscare as Massacre LOL.
When I hear this my first thought goes back to the campaign when Obama criticized Clinton for voting for the “war” saying he was always against it. The problem is he wasn’t a senator at the time and there is no way to know how he would have voted given the circumstances, the intelligence and info presented, the mood of the country etc. It’s easy to criticize when you weren’t under the same pressures and environment.
Even though I agree with most of Pawlenty’s assessment and what the ideal solution would be, I take it with the grain of salt until he actually demonstrates he could have pulled it off in the same circumstances. There is the ideal and there is the practical.
I’m still listening to Pawlenty and I like his ideas…you never know in 3 years.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
#4, Barack came out against it as a state senator, and everyone knew he wanted to seek the 2004 Senate seat, so he was risking his political career.
Still, you have a bit of a point.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
“A genuine free market would adequately punish people for not getting insurance BEFORE they get sick, by charging them higher premiums for…yes, pre-existing conditions.”
I’m a novice in a wide variety of issue areas, not the least of which is healthcare, so forgive me if this is a stupid question.
What about college students and other dependents coming off of a parents insurance with preexisting conditions? Should they be penalized for having illnesses that are common from birth, like diabetes or respiratory illness? I say no. But again, I don’t claim to be the leading expert on healthcare policy.
“For instance, what if, in addition to allowing insurance companies to charge higher rates for most pre-existing conditions, the government offered tax credits of some sort to folks who’d owned an insurance policy (any insurance policy) for a certain percentage of their adult life?”
Again, not the smartest person in the room here, but there are plenty of people who legitimately can’t afford to pay for a private health care plan. There really are. Wouldn’t this just amount to giving tax breaks to people who already have a pretty significant leg up on everybody else?
July 29th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Flip Dixon showing once again how little she knows. Did you even listen to what Pawlenty said? He acknowledge that MassCare has changed over the years since Romney left and its not the same program any more. But hey, facts never seem to bother you. Just keep spilling your liberal lies.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
BTW: Listening to Pawlenty, he seems to be looking for VP slot (most likely under Romney), and he just might get it.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Robbie,
Well, one of the dirty little secrets of the health care debate is that- due to adverse selection- it would actually be more beneficial, if politically impossible, to give tax breaks to “those who already have a pretty significant leg up”. If you get the young middle class into the system- which Masscare tried to do, and which Obamacare will supposedly try to do (if only indirectly)- you spread the risk over a wider base and you end up with a healthier pool of insurees. This will bring premiums down for everyone, provided you’re not finaggling with other things along the way. Insurance is meant to function this way: you pay in for lots of years when you don’t need it to hedge against the time when you do. Without the young and healthy in the system- paying in when they don’t need it- you’re left with lots older and sick people paying in when they do need it. This isn’t necessarily a huge problem, in the aggregate, because a 40 year old paying 600 bucks a month now, instead of 450, wasn’t paying anything 15 years ago when he (correctly) judged he could do without health insurance; it evens out. But, it makes the raw numbers for any given time period- in terms of average costs for premiums and the like- look pretty awful, and increase the demand for health care “reform”. The 40 year old’s paying 600 bucks a month conveniently forget they were paying nothing 15 years ago and just grumble about paying so much now.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
I think Pawlenty is more than VP material…he’s a class act, he’s a sharp talker, he’s an ideas man…he needs to bone it up a bit, maybe, in his rhetoric…a little more fire in the guy, and he needs a new look…looks too frumpy.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
8. Thunder, I could go for that.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
10. I don’t think he is more than VP material right now. He’s Romney-lite, but could become more credible if he runs in 2012.
July 29th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Oh, and:
“What about college students and other dependents coming off of a parents insurance with preexisting conditions? Should they be penalized for having illnesses that are common from birth, like diabetes or respiratory illness? I say no. But again, I don’t claim to be the leading expert on healthcare policy.”
That’s why I said “most pre-existing conditions”. I’d consider anything that can be put on an actuarial table (i.e, as you hit 40, your risk for X increases 50%) to be fair game- most cancer’s, heart disease, etc- as well as lifestyle issues (type 2 diabetes, lung cancer, etc). Freak occurrences or, as you say, instances where children with pre-existing conditions are coming off their parents insurance, shouldn’t be included. Logistics might be tough, but I think differentiations are profitable.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:10 pm
#12, Wow, Romney-lite is pretty lite indeed.
It’s like watered down non-alcoholic beer.
Pawlenty is much better than that. Way better.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
Pawlenty has two reasonable choices in how he wants to seek the Republican nomination;
1.) Mr Consensus: All the other candidates look unappealing to certain groups within the Republican Party. So they all look at him and say “Pawlenty, sure. Why not?”
2.) The Viable Anti-Romney: I say viable because he can compete on even terms with Romney in the North. More specifically, the Midwest, Great Plains, and parts of the Northeast, all while being at least acceptable to the South.
In a way, Pawlenty and Huckabee can team up and take on Romney in their own regions of the country. Pawlenty fights Romney in the North, and Huckabee takes him in the South.
July 29th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
July 29th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Jonathan, yes, with team tactics by all other candidates against Mitt, he could lose again; that’s the only way.
Pawlenty should get his facts straight about the cost. As the Taxpayers Foundatin made clear, the extra cost per year has only been 88 million dollars, 3/10th of 1% of the budget. I don’t know where he got his info.
Also, Heritage Foundation came out today and set the record straight that Mitt had vetoed the mandatory coverage, but it was overridden.
The key is though that they were paying out 1.3 billion for health care before the plan, and less than thay now, even though the rest of the country has gone up about 30% in those three years.
July 29th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
15 – Yes! They can peel just enough support away from Romney so Charlie Crist walks away with it!
I really hope this doesn’t happen again…
July 29th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
#17:
Well, if Romney and his campaign are smart, than they will be prepared for such things to happen again. Romney will be the front-runner in 2012, but that means he is going to have to manage expectations a lot better than he did in 2008. At the very least, if Romney isn’t going to win in IA or S.C. than avoid them like the plague.
#18:
Comrade Charlie isn’t running for President in 2012. He’ll angle for the VP slot like he did in 2008. Charlie still thinks he can play kingmaker in the Florida primary. Never mind that Bill McCollum is going to be our Governor in 2012, and Charlie is very unpopular with the Party base.
July 29th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Crist will never be chosen as VP!
July 29th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I think Romney and Crist would be a good pair.
Like Romney, Crist flipped on abortion late in life. And they are both excellent dressers.
July 29th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Re: pre-existing conditions
The starting point has to be the realization that we’re moving from an employment-based health insurance system to a consumer-based health insurance system, as Huckabee noted in some interview or other. In the old system, the risk was spread throughout a pool of employees who were all paying their premiums, which allowed the less healthy folks to get the treatment they need and the company to still make an overall profit due to the fact that the more healthy people were also paying premiums but never actually using any services. In a consumer based system, unhealthy people are basically uninsurable because insurance companies will lose money on them and there’s no reasonable premium that can be offered to some folks that will actually allow the company to turn a profit.
As such, unless we want people to be dropping like flies all around us (I don’t), it seems a reasonable compromise both to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and to prevent insurance companies from dropping folks from their roster once they become a net loss for the company in exchange for a requirement that everyone, including, yes, the young, healthy people, purchase health insurance. That way, the risk is effectively spread once again, like in the group plans, and the insurance companies won’t actually be losing money at the end of the day, because if they do, they can’t stay in business. Some folks hate this idea because they feel that it essentially amounts to healthy folks being penalized for those who don’t take care of themselves, or for those who just were dealt a bad hand when it comes to health. But guess what, young, vibrant 25 year olds — you won’t always be so young and vibrant, and the day that things start to ache and break is the day you’ll be happy you were required to purchase insurance as opposed to waiting until you get hit by a bus and then finding yourself searching for insurance that will cover the two dozen pre-existing conditions you will then have. It’s a sensible compromise, probably too sensible for anyone to agree on.
July 29th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Pawlenty is everything I dislike about politicians. He’s attacking Mitt’s Health Reform bill by telling lies about about the costs in MA only to cover his own butt.
Pawlenty cut $381 Million dollars and cut 100,000 poor from the General Assistance Medical care program, Money set aside from a 2% tax increase for that very purpose.
By telling lies about MA Reform costs, he thought he could justify the cuts he made.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
IKV, isent that what McCain did during the primary’s? And Huckabee? Telling lies about Mitt? Anyone remember ‘timetables’ a few days before election?
If they start tag teaming Mitt again, he should just put out a photo of Obama with the caption “Yea, guys. It worked the last time you did it too.”
July 29th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
You know flipper, some people acutally have principaled changes of viewpoints. I know it must be hard to get, but Romney changed his public view of abortion. Big deal. So did Ronald Reagan.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
#25:Knickers;
Romney’s very well respected inside the GOP now, he’s really proven himself.
I don’t think they would allow second tier candidates to start an alliance against him this time, they realize how important this election is and what is at stake.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:47 am
No one teamed up on Romney in ’08. Romney declared war on everyone else. That guy was gunning hard at every other major candidate as inadequately conservative, and in the meantime taking insane hard-right positions no independent voter would ever look at sanely. Hence his negatives following the campaign were humongous.
His bridges only started burnt with a small band of anti-Mormons in the religious right, but he finished burning most of the rest of them over the campaign, and were promptly put to the torch on the other side in his tirades against so called RINOs (a dumb concept if there ever was one) McCain and Rudy and their deviances from conservative orthodoxy. The nail in the coffin for him was that McCain became the conservative consensus candidate, not Romney. That’s how bad his strategy was.
If the campaign were a game of Risk, Romney would have started with Europe and invaded Africa, Asia, and North America all at the same time. Team Romney applauded and continues this unique strategy to this very day.
July 30th, 2009 at 4:22 am
#27
MPC:
Come on where have you been for the last year?
Romney didn’t declare war on anyone. He ran a traditional campaign where he compared Huckabee and McCain’s record against his, along with using documented records of Huckabee when he was Governor, Huckabee did the same to Romney’s record. No harm done there, that’s fair and the normal way primaries are conducted.
What isn’t normal is two candidates of the same party form an alliance as a tactic to destroy a front runner to knock him out of a Primary,
July 30th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Did you hear Pawlenty say, He is a friend of Mitt Romney and costs have escalated since Mitt left… If, Mitt were still there with his mathmatical ability, I’m sure the problems would be addressed and corrected. Go to Competent Conservatives and read the Heritage Foundation new letter addressing this as NOT Mitt’s doing…..GET your freaking facts!!!!!!I’m sick and tired of you people not accepting Mitt as a credible person…with goodness throughout….You Don’t know HIM!!!!!
July 30th, 2009 at 7:57 am
With friends like this, you really don’t need any enemies.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:23 am
Well, here’s a question…is Romneycare a legitimate topic of discussion? Many of the Romney supporters, on this board, seem to feel that it is not? I am not sure, it seems, there’s some explaining to do. Romney, himself seems to be aware that it is/will be an issue now and in the future so he is taking the time to explain himself. One must admit that forcing coverage on people is not really what we believe in, according to Heritage that is not what he did and Romney did do what this health care debate/fiasco should be about…it’s a state’s issue.
I don’t believe in government run or mandated health care but many Americans do. I believe it will stifle the occupation. I believe it will add a multitude of regulations to the already slew of ineffective ones. The real problem with this, and most policy, is that our country has a history of not fixing the actual problems but duct taping them and forcing a new crop of politicians to face the same exact problems 10 or 20 years later. I believe we need to strip away regulation and replace them with modern ones that make sense for an overgrowing population and an, unfortunate, unhealthier lifestyle.
Does Romneycare do that? It seems the debate is more about how many uncovered people live in this country and how health insurance should work when the debate should be about the care that is received. If Obama took the time and made the debate a 3 phase argument initiating incremental legislature that evolves the system into a fiscally responsible, conceivable entity, where care is both eastern and western in its philosophies he would be composing a winning strategy that could make real change. BUT instead he decides it would be more historical and grandiose if he were to change the entire system with one single bill. I guess we can hope it works if we change everything we believe in.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Jersey, I haven’t noticed Romney supporters feeling this is not a topic for discussion. But, if their is some reluctance on some people’s part, it is probably due to the fact that many things have changed since Mitt has left, and also that many provisions were vetoed by Mitt, but were overridden. I think if it is addressed honestly by all sides, it will not be a thorn in Mitt’s side. In fact, I think he may come out looking good once everything is out on the table in an honest way.
September 26th, 2009 at 11:41 am
[...] companies ignore pre-existing conditions. This might not be exactly how I’d approach health-care reform but it promotes a series of pretty easy to understand changes that would actually lower health care [...]