Our friend, Washington Post health blogger Ezra Klein is on Olbermann and Maddow all the time. But this is the best platform ever. When’s our turn?



Health reform is stimulating all kinds of creativity, particularly in the “poetry” department.

A few weeks ago, there was a twitter storm of health care reform haiku. Of course, twitter’s 140-character limit is ideal for haiku. You can read them all by searching twitter for “#hcr haiku.” If I say so myself, I was proud of my contribution: Lieberman flip flops / No miracle in these days / Hanukkah shanda.

Now a new genre has emerged, parodies of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” (officially titled, “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”) While the final health reform vote has just been moved from literally the night before Christmas, to 8:00 am on Thursday, the seasonal juices are still a wonder to behold.

(UPDATE: The NY Times Prescriptions blog noticed the same thing, and held reader a contest for the best poem.)

On the Senate floor was Senator Burris (video below, click to read his poem), whose best line was “What in the world would be quite so raucous / But a mandate for change from the Democratic caucus” (so much better than the obvious rhyme of “caucus” with “Baucus”).

From the other side there’s Missouri Senator Kit Bond, reading on his couch in his Republican Red sweats and his dogs jumping all over him:

This is what makes it all worthwhile. Having to again wade through all the clips to select the best for the blog. The Betsy McCaughey interview is even important. Enjoy:

Betsy McCaughey Part 1
Jon asks Betsy McCaughey to find the page in the health care bill that makes end-of-life consultations mandatory (background on McCaughey)

Barney Frank slams back:

Colbert looks at Obama’s op-ed in the Times

And check out this from The Onion. Excerpt:

Congress Deadlocked Over How To Not Provide Health Care

WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.

“Both parties understand that the current system is broken,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. “But what we can’t seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue.”

This off-topic yet timely Onion piece is not bad, either.
-Brian Rosman

A mid-August weekend, and there’s only so much attention one can pay to the health care world.

We could link you to the insightful editorial in the Taunton Daily Gazette, “Bay State’s health reform success story,” but the editorial only echoes similar points made by the Globe and Times in the past few weeks, concluding that MA health reform “has shown what progress can be made through a well-balanced approach - and thousands of residents are better off for it.”

Or we could direct you to this summary of research on Massachusetts health reform, from Urban Institute researcher Sharon Long. Her conclusion reads a lot like the Taunton editorial:

“Our research at the Urban Institute shows that health reform in Massachusetts has accomplished much of what it set out to do. Nearly everyone in the state has health insurance; more people have access to care; and care has become more affordable. Expanded insurance hasn’t crowded out employer-sponsored insurance coverage—instead, the individual mandate has increased enrollment in employer-sponsored insurance plans. … The facts from Massachusetts show that comprehensive, bipartisan reform (the law was passed by a Democratic-majority legislature and signed by a Republican governor), is indeed possible, and that state residents are better off because of it.”

And if someone really had time to sit through a talking heads discussion, we could point you to this C-Span interview with Karen Ignagni of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Ignani says (at around 4:40) that the reason the insurance industry has agreed to go along with most of the insurance reforms in President Obama’s proposal is because of the experience under Massachusetts reform. Massachusetts gave them the confidence to support guaranteed issue, no medical underwriting and rating constraints in the context of an individual mandate.

Or we could remind you that if you have a cousin somewhere who thinks their Medicare might disappear, or an old college roommate who thinks national health reform is some plot, you could forward this email from the White House with all the facts and links.

But no. Instead, we did the hard work of wading through this week’s Daily Shows and Colbert, and are embedding the best of the health care clips:

Glen Beck was against the American health care system before he was for it:



Town halls “Awaken the Sleeping Giant”



I can see health care from my window:



Great Debate:



And one of our favorite bloggers, Jonathan Cohn, gives a real interview to Colbert:



-Brian Rosman

This is bizarro-funny.

A blog takes Kaiser’s public domain health news, and I think round-trip auto-translates it into another language and back into English. Or something. I don’t know, but it’s amusing. Here’s an example (source):

NEW YORK TIMES EXAMINES MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH INSURANCE LAW AS MODEL FOR U.S. HEALTH REFORM

“By tackling outlay at the aforementioned instance as access,” the Obama brass and congressional lawmakers “have prefabricated their semipolitical contest more difficult,” the New royalty Times reports.

According to the Times, the exclusive “real-life help in this land for the category of comprehensive modify existence thoughtful in Washington” is Massachusetts’ 2006 upbeat shelter law, which has helped the land attain near-universal news but could be jeopardized by ascension upbeat tending costs.

The Times reports that Colony lawmakers in nonindustrial the organisation definite to “decouple admittance and cost, and to care prototypal with concealment the uninsured.” In past interviews, grouping participating in crafting the accumulation said that deferring decisions on outlay containment was needed to accomplish a consensus on the individualist news mandate. saint Dreyfus, chief evilness chair of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, said, “When you move conversation most cost, you create winners and losers and that leads to a semipolitical challenge.” Current efforts by land lawmakers to compel curb costs, including a offering to modify the physician commercialism system, module more earnestly effort consensus on the law, “but the adventure is that stakeholders are today so endowed they cannot backwards away,” the Times reports.

According to the Times, the “times and the persuasion are assorted in Washington, where the ceding has destined both parties that outlay containment cannot wait. But by addressing costs and admittance simultaneously, the White House and legislature venture alienating key welfare groups from the get-go.” Jon Kingsdale — administrator of the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector Authority, which oversees the state’s supported upbeat news information — advisable that legislature transfer governing that would modify news and assign outlay containment decisions to a commission. He said, “The construct is to ordering improve in whatever artefact to do the rattling hornlike thing, which is expanding access, before we do the nearly impracticable thing, which is containing costs. We don’t poverty to modify up retentive 50 meg uninsurable captive to outlay containment.”

John Sasso, a Colony semipolitical contriver who represented the state’s maximal underwriter and maximal infirmary meshwork during word of the Colony law, said, “My undergo has been that if you move discover disagreeable to organisation the amend organisation you module fail,” adding, “The content has got to be to care with every the levers that change outlay and admittance and calibre but to not beat in some of those areas. Everybody had a destined domain but not so onerous, not so thickened on the face end, that it would drive grouping to retrograde establishment in the individual of concealment everybody”

This is very weird.

I get the boomlet about Deval Patrick being considered for the Secretary of Health and Human Services slot, to replace Tom Daschle. According to the Washington Post, he’s on the short list along with Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, former Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt and John Podesta, the transition head who was chief of staff for Bill Clinton. Patrick absolutely denies all interest in going to Washington.

But Mitt Romney? The Atlantic’s fairly reliable blogger, Marc Ambinder, and Time Magazine’s Karen Tumulty both think Mitt might be Obama’s man for the job.

We don’t underestimate Governor Romney’s critical role in advancing health reform in Massachusetts. He deserves a major share of the credit for both the conception of the plan and the politics that led to its passage. But we don’t see him coming anywhere close to being on the President’s wavelength on health care, never mind abortion and the many other issues under the HHS Secretary’s purview.

As with most things Mitt, we’re going to have to label this post under the “humor” category.
Brian Rosman

UPDATE: Pretty much the same post, with more content, from David at BMG.

I’ve been saving our “Health Care Humor” tag for when/if Mitt Romney is selected as VP candidate, and has to walk back from chapter 58, his campaign’s claim for his signal achievement, but this new statement from McCain health plan author John Goodman is too good to pass up.

He claims that anyone who can go to an emergency room effectively has health insurance.

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voilà! Problem solved.”

I assume no reader of this blog takes this seriously, but just in case The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn shreds Goodman’s point.

UPDATE: McCain campaign is trying disown this guy, first denying he was an advisor, then just saying they disagree. Link.

If universal coverage came to America, some people would leave the country. But where would they go?

Audio fun from the Onion.

Elizabeth Edwards was on Colbert last night, more than holding her own and speaking out for universal coverage and ending poverty:

Colbert, defending the insurers, pleaded for the redundancy industry.

He should get his talking points from the new effort by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) - the insurance industry trade association - to raise an activist army of 100,000 to promote their take on health reform (report here). The expensive campaign will involve public listening-session roundtables (including Boston), web and blogs, paid media ads, and a high-cost grassroots component.

This is an attempt to move somewhat off the rejectionist stance typical of the insurance industry. They’ve enlisted Clinton HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and a former John Edwards organizer, among those you would not expect to play. Yet their policy still exudes the cherry-picking mentality that rules most insurers: “If states were to provide coverage for those too expensive to insure, [AHIP spokesman Michael Tuffin] said, the industry would be willing to offer guaranteed coverage to everyone else…”
Brian Rosman

UPDATE: This post, from the Managed Care Matters blog, makes the point clearer:

Of course, health plans have a solution to this [all but 5 states allow insurers to reject coverage of preexisting conditions; MA is one of the exceptions] - they will cover a few more folks with pre-ex conditions, as long as the states agree to cover anyone with more serious problems. Now that’s free market business at its best - guaranteeing private companies will take the good risks, and dumping the rest on the taxpayer. The plan, put together after “tireless efforts of the senior leadership of our industry” and seven months of hard work by AHIP’s board would require state high-risk pools to take on anyone who may incur medical costs more than twice the state average, while requiring insurers to cover the rest.

If there’s a clearer statement of the industry’s lack of confidence in its ability to manage health care, I haven’t seen it….. AHIP should change its name from America’s Health Insurance Plans to the ARSC - America’s Risk Selection Companies.


Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children�s Healthcare

Who knows how much longer we’ll have Mitt for our needed doses of health care humor. So let’s give him some air time to confuse further the American public about the MA health reform law (our comments in italics). This is from the transcript of Saturday’s ABC News presidential debate:

ROMNEY: A lot of people have ideas about health care and improving health care. We took the ideas and actually made them work in our state, as people in New Hampshire know. We put in place a plan that gets every citizen in our state health insurance, and it didn’t cost us new money. Actually, it’s costing a lot of new money — an extra $146 million in FY08 alone. And it didn’t require us to raise taxes. What we found was, it was less expensive or no more expensive to help individuals who had been uninsured by their own private policy than it had been for us to give out free care at the hospital. Nonsense — it’s the right thing to do, AND is costs more money, not less, to give people insurance coverage. And since we put our plan in place last April, we’ve now had 300,000 people who were uninsured sign up for this insurance, private insurance. Actually, 70,000 plus got enrolled in MassHealth, the MA Medicaid program; and 160,00+ are in Commonwealth Care which is a sister cousin to Medicaid if there ever was one. And where the doctor — good doctor was wrong is that it’s true the insurance companies don’t want to sell policies to one person at a time. It’s expensive. We established what we called a connector, a place where individuals could go to buy policies from any company, and that connector would in turn send their premiums on to those companies. So the economics of scale existed. And as a result of what we did, the premiums for health insurance for an individual buying insurance went from $350 a month to $180 a month, with lower deductibles and now with prescription drugs.

ROMNEY: The answer…

GIBSON: Anybody…

ROMNEY: Let me just — I just — I want to underline this. We don’t have to have government take over health care to get everybody insured. That’s what the Democrats keep on hanging out there. The truth is, we can get everybody insured in a free market way. We don’t need Hillary-care or socialized medicine. MA health reform would not be possible without significant government involvement at multiple levels.

…

GIBSON: But Government Romney’s system has mandates in Massachusetts, although you backed away from mandates on a national basis.

ROMNEY: No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.

THOMPSON: I beg your pardon? I didn’t know you were going to admit that. You like mandates.

ROMNEY: Let me — let me — oh, absolutely. Let me tell you what kind of mandates I like, Fred, which is this. If it weren’t…

THOMPSON: The ones you come up with. Bingo.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMNEY: Here’s my view: If somebody — if somebody can afford insurance and decides not to buy it, and then they get sick, they ought to pay their own way, as opposed to expect the government to pay their way. And that’s an American principle. That’s a principle of personal responsibility. So, I said this: If you can afford to buy insurance, then buy it. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to buy it, but then you got to put enough money aside that you can pay your own way, because what we’re not going to do is say, as we saw more and more people…

GIBSON: Governor, (inaudible) you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts (inaudible).

ROMNEY: Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else, because right now…

THOMPSON: The government is going to make you buy insurance…

ROMNEY: No, the government is going to stop…

THOMPSON: ,.. and make you pay — I mean, the state — your state plan, which is, of course, different from your national plan, did require people to make that choice, though. The state required them to do that. What was the penalty if they refused?

ROMNEY: They refused to pay your — let’s go back, Fred. What’s your view? If somebody…

THOMPSON: Well, I asked the question first.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMNEY: OK. Well, I’ll answer your question, you answer mine. If somebody is making, let’s say $100,000 a year, and doesn’t have health insurance, and they show up at the hospital, and they need a $1,000 repair of some kind for something that’s gone wrong. And they say, “Look, I’m not insured, I’m not going to pay.” Do you think they should pay or not?

THOMPSON: Did your plan cut people off at $100,000? Was that the level?

ROMNEY: No, actually…

THOMPSON: Did it only apply to people with $100,000 income and over?

ROMNEY: It actually applies to people at three-times federal poverty. They pay for their own policy. At less than three-times federal poverty, we help them buy a policy, so everybody is insured, and everybody is able to buy a policy that is affordable for them. The question is this, again, if someone could afford a policy and they choose not to buy it, should they be responsible for paying for their own care? Or should they be able to go to the hospital and say, “You know what? I’m not insured. You ought to pay for it.” What we found was, one-quarter of the uninsured in my state were making $75,000 a year or more. And my view is they should either buy insurance or they should pay their own way with a health savings account or some other savings account.

GIBSON: We have an expression in television: We get in the weeds. We’re in the weeds now on this.

(CROSSTALK)

GIBSON: Let me just — one point. Yes or no, in your national plan, would you mandate people to get insurance?

ROMNEY: I think my plan is a good plan that should be adopted by other states. I wouldn’t tell every state…

GIBSON: In your plan, would you mandate…

ROMNEY: I would not mandate at the federal level that every state do what we do. But what I would say at the federal level is, “We’ll keep giving you these special payments we make if you adopt plans that get everybody insured.” I want to get everybody insured.

GIBSON: OK.

ROMNEY: In Governor Schwarzenegger’s state, he’s got a different plan to get people insured. I wouldn’t tell him he has to do it my way. But I’d say each state needs to get busy on the job of getting all our citizens insured. It does not cost more money. Only in your mind does it not cost more money.

…

ROMNEY: OK, don’t leave me. Don’t send the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys.

MCCAIN: Well, they are.

ROMNEY: No, actually they’re trying to create products to make us well and make us better, and they’re doing the work of the free market. And are there excesses? I’m sure there are, and we should go after excesses. But they’re an important industry to this country. But let me note something else, and that is the market will work. And the reason health care isn’t working like a market right now is you have 47 million people that are saying, “I’m not going to play. I’m just going to get free care paid for by everybody else.” That doesn’t work. Number two, the buyer doesn’t have information about what the cost or quality is, or different choices they could have. If you take the government out of it to a much greater extent, you’d get it to work like a market and it will rein in cost.

We’ve been laying low on the SCHIP fight because there’s been so much other commentary on it. Thank you, President Bush, for giving SCHIP more publicity and attention in the past two months than at any other point in its 10 year history. That’s as far as the appreciation goes. Below is a great piece from Dow Jones (reported in today’s Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report) on the Bush Administration’s track record regarding adult coverage under SCHIP — priceless:

Dow Jones on Monday examined how although Bush “has complained about adults receiving” SCHIP coverage, it was the Bush administration that “granted the majority of current waivers that enable states to enroll parents” in the program, and “it has approved every one of the waivers that enable the enrollment of childless adults.” Eleven states currently provide SCHIP benefits to adults, eight of which were approved during Bush’s term. In 2006, about 700,000 SCHIP beneficiaries were adults; 500,000 of those beneficiaries were parents of children enrolled in the program and the rest were childless adults. Childless adults were able to enroll in the program beginning in 2001, after the Bush administration implemented the Health Insurance Flexibility and Accountability initiative.

In July 2006, then-CMS Administrator Mark McClellan said, “Extending coverage to parents and caretaker relatives not only serves to cover additional uninsured individuals, but it may also increase the likelihood that they will take the steps necessary to enroll their children.” However, White House spokesperson Tony Fratto said that the administration was “always cautious” about allowing adults to enroll in SCHIP. Fratto said that the administration “listened to the request from states for greater flexibility in administering their state plans for SCHIP,” adding, “They argued that adding adults would result in more children being added. This experiment obviously failed and should not be extended” (Mantell, Dow Jones, 11/5).

For more humor in this vein, see this cartoon.

We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried. Full Republican Debate transcript available by clicking here.

ROMNEY: We solved the problem of health care in our state not by having the government take it over, the way Hillary Clinton would – with private free-enterprise approaches.

…

MODERATOR: Governor Romney, we have an e-mailed question from Kendrick of Oakland, California, who says the health plan you left in Massachusetts, which required people to get their own insurance, amounts to Hillary Care. You say it was the result of a Democratic legislature. I want to ask you: If a Democratic Congress placed such a plan on your desk in the Oval Office, would you sign it? And why was the plan good for Massachusetts and not good for the nation?

ROMNEY: First of all, I’m not going to give the Democratic legislature credit for the plan I helped build. So I want to let you know I’m very proud of what we did in Massachusetts, and I think it’s a model that other states can adopt in some respects. But let me tell you something about our plan. It’s different than Hillary Clinton’s in a lot of important ways. But one thing that I’m happy about is that Republicans are talking about health care. This isn’t a Democrat issue. It’s a Republican issue.

For Democrats, they want to have government take it over. And I don’t want to have the guys who did the cleanup at Katrina taking responsibility for health care in this country. The right answer is to get people insured, all of our citizens insured so they don’t have to worry about losing their insurance if they change jobs or have a pre-existing condition.

But Hillary says the federal government’s going to tell you what kind of insurance, and it’s all government insurance. And I say no, let the states create their own plans, and instead of government insurance, private, market-based insurance. Hillary’s plan costs an extra $110 billion. My plan doesn’t cost any additional money. We use the money we’re already spending, we just use it a good deal more wisely.

And the real question here is, are we going to talk about health care and get everybody insured with private insurance? Absolutely. Because the alternative is unthinkable. As P.J. O’Rourke said, if you think health care’s expensive now, just wait until it’s free. We’re not going Hillary’s way.

MODERATOR: Governor, I think one of the aspect of your plan required individuals to provide their own health insurance, and I think Congressman Hunter wants to talk to you about that.

HUNTER: Yes Wendell, I think the Governor’s plan goes in exactly the wrong direction, because while it allows for private health insurance, it has lots of mandates. He has a good piece of those 1,000 or so mandates that drive up the cost of health care. That means that every single plan in the governor’s state has to have certain things. It’s got to have, for example, fertility coverage. Well, what if you’re 90 years old? We may appreciate Governor Romney’s optimism … but you may not need fertility coverage. Those 1,000 mandates that we have throughout the States, where we do have mandates health insurance plans, is driving up the cost of health care by about 35 percent. We need freedom. We need to allow people to buy their health care across state lines. That will bring down the cost of health care.

ROMNEY: Oh, I’ve got to respond to that.

MODERATOR: Briefly, Governor.

ROMNEY: Yeah, we took as many mandates out as we could in our policies. And the legislature kept some there. I tried to take them all out; they put some back in. It was a compromise. They put some mandates there.

But let me tell you how many we got out. The price of the premium for an individual, 42 years old, in Boston, used to be $350 a month. Now, it’s $180. We basically cut it in half by deregulating. Congressman, you’re absolutely right that taking regulation out of insurance brings the price down, and that’s why my plan would go state by state, deregulate them so we can get the cost of premiums down. But it is unacceptable to keep talking about this and still have 47 million people without health insurance. We got the job done. This is the first state in American that is on track to have everybody insured. Half of my uninsured are now insured, and I am proud of what we’ve done.

…

MODERATOR: You spoke well of private accounts (in Social Security). President Bush tried very hard. He came into office with a reputation of being able to bring people together in Texas. He tried very hard to bring people together around his proposal. You saw what happened to it.

ROMNEY: Yes.

MODERATOR: How could you do better?

ROMNEY: Well, you know, I will learn from his experience and from my own, because it took us a couple of years to find a way to get everybody in our state insured. We wanted them insured, but we didn’t want government to have to pick up a new bill. And so we spent a lot of time working on it.

We didn’t just have a bunch of bureaucrats. We had a professor from MIT, an investment banker, a head of a consulting firm. We all worked on it, came up with an idea, and then met with Democrats and said: Can we find common ground here? And, you know, Democrats also love America. As Ronald Reagan used to say, it’s not that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that what they know is wrong. So you’ve got to – you can educate each other. We’ve got some things to learn from time to time, too. And you can find common ground. We will do that, and we will solve these entitlement problems.

We said it a few weeks ago: Bush’s SCHIP veto is a gift from on high.

This is good, too. And this:

OK, we categorize this as “health care humor.” Just count the number of times you break out laughing and you’ll get it. But this is no joke — this is Mitt Romney’s column in today’s Wall Street Journal. Priceless.

Where HillaryCare Goes Wrong
By MITT ROMNEY — September 20, 2007

Some of the details have changed, but at the heart of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s new health-care proposal are the same flaws that sunk her first version. They flow from her distrust of markets, from her distaste for profit-motivated private enterprise, and from her consequent faith that Washington knows best. The truth is that the American people know best, and when a sector of the economy is not working as well as it might, you should look to give the people more influence, to unleash competitive forces, and to welcome private ingenuity. The last thing you should do is apply more government. But that’s just what HillaryCare Version 2.0 does.

As governor of Massachusetts, I led the fight for reforms that used free markets and innovation, rather than big-government control, to lower health-care costs and cover the uninsured. I recently proposed a federalist reform plan that will use these principles to improve America’s health-care system. Sen. Clinton has a very different view about the changes we need to make. Her plan has several weaknesses and should be distinguished from the reforms I led in Massachusetts and the reform plan I have proposed. So let’s take a closer look at what her new proposal would really do:

• Raise taxes. The new plan is slated to cost $110 billion a year. And to pay for the new entitlement — a tax hike. That in turn will slow down the economy and make the cost of her system grow even higher. By contrast, both the reforms I led in Massachusetts and the federalist reform plan I recently proposed do not raise taxes or increase spending. In fact, in the new plan that I have proposed, funds currently sent to states to care for the uninsured are made flexible so that the states may use them to help the poor acquire their own private insurance.

• Expand government insurance. People who don’t obtain insurance through their employer are invited to buy a government-run, Medicare-like plan or enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). And so, more Americans will end up in government-run insurance. It’s the gentle slope to a single payer, socialized medicine model. My plan in Massachusetts instead allowed the uninsured to choose a private insurance product from one of the many private insurance companies.

• Impose a national model on everyone. Sen. Clinton fundamentally distrusts state governments. But the states are closer to the people, and more responsive to them. They are also the laboratories of democracy — the best ideas can come from 50 states each doing their best work. The senator’s plan is a one-size-fits-all approach. It ignores significant differences between people and the needs of the 50 different states. Federalism is the right approach. The national reforms I have proposed give states financial flexibility to craft their own program to cover the uninsured, a program tailored to the specific needs of their citizens.

• Significantly increase the role of the federal government at the expense of free markets. For example, Sen. Clinton proposes the creation of an entirely new government-run Medicare-like program for the uninsured. Inevitably, lobbyists will go to town adding coverage mandates, setting rates and re-shaping plans to fit the wants of their clients. The better path is the market path. Let the multitude of private companies compete for the consumer’s dollar — the quality and the cost will be much better than what government could ever cobble together.

• Leave the mandate problem unsolved. Before you can impose a mandate on employers or individuals to purchase insurance, you need to reform state health insurance markets. Otherwise, policies can be so beefed-up with state mandated coverage and regulation that they are simply unaffordable. Then a mandate is unfair.

Moreover, her employer mandate doesn’t solve the problem of the uninsured — that’s why I vetoed a similar measure when I was governor of Massachusetts. I chose an individual mandate only after we had done our best to reform state insurance regulations — lowering premiums by as much as 50%. Let’s be clear here: My plan in Massachusetts worked very differently than Sen. Clinton’s plan would. First, we worked to reduce the burdens of regulation. The legislature insisted on more coverage mandates and regulation than I would have liked, but even so, less regulation has resulted in much lower premiums.

Second, we used the money we were already getting from the federal government to help the poor purchase their own private insurance — without new taxes or spending. And even the poor paid their fair share of their premiums. Third, with the help of the Heritage Foundation, we found a path for most individuals to purchase insurance with pre-tax dollars, just like people who get their coverage through their employers. And finally, once premiums had been lowered and the poor were able to afford private insurance, my plan called for people to either purchase insurance or pay their own way — no more free riders.

I like the plan I put forward in Massachusetts. But even so, I wouldn’t do what Sen. Clinton does — impose my way on every other state. Other states may borrow from what we did. Some will surely improve on it. But let’s keep faith in federalism, in private markets and in individual responsibility.

I have announced my health-care plan for the nation. It follows the principles I pursued in Massachusetts. Reform state insurance markets first, to lower the cost of policies. Give states financial flexibility with Medicaid funds and with existing “free care” payments so that states can craft their own programs to expand private insurance. End the tax discrimination against individual purchasers of health insurance who currently must buy their coverage with post-tax dollars.

These, among other features of my plan, will lower the cost of health insurance, get all of our citizens insured, remove the threat of losing insurance when you lose or change jobs, improve the health of our citizens, and reduce the growth in health-care spending. It’s the free market way, the private sector way, the individual responsibility way — the American way.”

Our humor category is growing by leaps and bounds. Kudos to Charley on the MTA at Blue Mass Group for catching this spicy tidbit from the Boston Globe’s Primary Source political blog:

Likely Republican voters were asked how familiar they were the healthcare plans of all their candidates, even including non-candidate Fred Thompson. The results? In Nevada 29 percent said they were familiar with Thompson’s healthcare plan. In New Hampshire it was 15 percent, in Iowa 18 percent, in Florida it was 22 percent and in South Carolina had 24 percent with some idea about his plan.

Huh?

Thompson makes no reference to healthcare in his short stump speeches and has yet to even enter the race much less offer a healthcare plan.Nonetheless voters in these states told the pollsters at Woelfel Research, Inc that they were more familiar with Fred Thompson’s healthcare plan than they were of Tommy Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback.

Wow.

In a stunning admission at a campaign health event in Florida today, Republican Presidential Candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said that he had been “brainwashed” while serving as governor and agreeing to a big government health expansion scheme.

“Gosh, there was so much blue, so much blue, everywhere, my eyes kind of glazed over and I lost focus,” Romney said, referring to the Massachusetts health reform law known as Chapter 58 which has thus far expanded affordable health insurance coverage to about 175,000 formerly uninsured individuals, mostly through expanded government financing.

“Now that I’ve left that darn state, I’ve seen the light,” Romney admitted, saying he feels a pain in his stomach every time he thinks about the law which requires government, individuals, and employers to make contributions to create a near-universal health care structure.

In the early part of his presidential drive, Romney rarely mentioned Massachusetts or health care. But just last month, rival candidate Rudolph Giuliani advanced his own health reform platform to favorable reviews from conservative analysts. Romney’s new plan, described in today’s New York Times, hews closely to Republican health care orthodoxy, so much that conservative critics of Chapter 58 are offering praise:

“Compared to what Gov. Romney did in Massachusetts, that would be a dramatic improvement,” said Michael F. Cannon, director of health-policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, which has blasted Mr. Romney for the state plan. “If it’s geared toward getting government out of people’s health-care decisions by reforming the tax code, wow, that’s fantastic.” — WSJ

“I know people can look at my health law and think, ‘holy Toledo, he’s a big government so and so.’ But, just like Ronald Reagan and Rudy Giuliani changed their minds, well, heck, I’ve changed mine as well,” the candidate noted.

In an unusual move, at the end of the event, the Romney campaign served cherry pie for all reporters and participants.