Romney Supports Health Mandate: The Wrong One, of Course

Quite amazingly while demagoging health care reform, Mitt continues to support the ER mandate that drives up costs, adds remarkable inefficiency to our non-system of health care, and is really bad medicine. 

Yet this seemingly rational person strongly opposes the same requirements that he included in the Massachusetts health reform package when he was governor.  He seems to have lost his way, on this and many issues.

Republicans have a dilemma on health policy. They are adamantly opposed to government paying for health care or a mandate requiring people to buy health insurance. At the same time, they recognize that they cannot say to the world that if a dying person shows up at an emergency room without insurance, that person will be left to die in the street. Thus they support a little-known mandate requiring hospitals to treat the uninsured, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.

Romney has “cogently” noted:

“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”

Medicynical Note:  I don’t know whether these republicans have screw loose or exist in an alternate reality.  Guess who pays for the “free” health care offered by ER’s?  Guess who subsidizes this non-system of care that is knowingly inefficient, excessively costly and simply bad medicine. 

The President’s health care reform offers a way out…….it should be embraced and improved.

Our health care non-system is number one in the world in costs, in inefficiency, in inducing personal bankruptcy, and in creating wealth for health insurers, drug companies, hospital corporations and in many cases providers.  It’s not nearly number one in health care. There’s something terribly wrong.