Candidate Review - Health Care - Mitt Romney

Romney likes to have you watch him speak rather than read his words. I don't have time to listen and transcribe and frankly I'm not interested in doing that anyway. So you have to put up with what little text he has on his website, which is a brief statement and two quotes.

The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms.

"We can't have as a nation 40 million people -- or, in my state, half a million -- saying, 'I don't have insurance, and if I get sick, I want someone else to pay."

The quote is from a USA Today story, and I'm not sure how flattering it is. Certainly a section of the Republican base wants to hear "Sick people who don't have health insurance get what they deserve." But I don't know how that will fly in America as a whole. The other quote isn't much better.

"It's a conservative idea," says Romney, "insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care. I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase."

Again from USA Today. But of course what is lacking (and I've not reproduced the entire page) is any suggestion of how people who aren't insured now are going to get insured. Is Romney just going to take the presidential podium, look America in the eye and say "You uninsured people - get insured. Thank you and goodnight." Or what?

In other Romney related news, there's a post by Glenn Greenwald on Romney's service as a Mormon Missionary during the Vietnam War - a war he supported but didn't feel much desire to participate in (he got a mission deferment and then an educational deferment).