Obamneycare And The Future Of America

It looks as if the Republican party is not offering an alternative to the current president when it comes to transformative issues such as health care. (While this post isn't about Newt Gingrich, it should be noted that he is no conservative and has called himself a progressive and stated his admiration for Franklin Roosevelt.) It looks like the Republican party is flirting with nominating a candidate that is very hard to distinguish from Obama. The current front runner in the Republican presidential primary Mitt Romney's health care plan the he implemented and steadfastly defends is basically the same thing as Obama's health care plan. This issue was brought to light in one of the recent presidential debate where Rick Santorum challenged Romney on this issue and was told that this is nothing to get angry about. If the fundamental transformation of our society's culture and our country is nothing to get angry about then I don't know what is. Hot Air notes that having a republican candidate that supports government will run health care will be a big public relations win for the left:

Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end up losing the election, the PR value to the left of having the Republican standard-bearer mimicking O’s rhetoric on ObamaCare is incalculable for the repeal battle ahead. That was always one of the greatest pitfalls in choosing Mitt — at a minimum, the right will have to temper its criticism of mandates during the general election — but darned if we’re not poised to go ahead and choose him anyway. And as Peter Suderman at Reason notes, this clip doesn’t even exhaust the similarities between RomneyCare and its much larger younger brother:

Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end up losing the election, the PR value to the left of having the Republican standard-bearer mimicking O’s rhetoric on ObamaCare is incalculable for the repeal battle ahead. That was always one of the greatest pitfalls in choosing Mitt — at a minimum, the right will have to temper its criticism of mandates during the general election — but darned if we’re not poised to go ahead and choose him anyway. And as Peter Suderman at Reason notes, this clip doesn’t even exhaust the similarities between RomneyCare and its much larger younger brother:

During last night’s debate, Romney also defended his plan from charges that it resembled ObamaCare by arguing that in Massachusetts, “there’s no government plan.” He’s used this line before, but it’s never helped distinguish Romney’s health overhaul from Obama’s: There’s no “government plan” in ObamaCare either, or at least no more of one than there is in RomneyCare. Both ObamaCare and RomneyCare rely on a regulated market and an expansion of Medicaid. Nor is Romney the only one to point this out in order to defend the structure both plans share: In his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama touted the fact that “our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program.”

In the end, Romney only ended up reinforcing the similarities between his plan and President Obama’s. It’s hard to make a convincing case that the RomneyCare is somehow dramatically different from ObamaCare while relying on virtually the same arguments employed by ObamaCare’s most prominent defender.

Michael Tomasky agrees with Rick Santorum that nominating Romney will be giving up the issue of Obamacare in this years election:

The moment was, of course, the exchange between Rick Santorum and Romney when Santorum was aggressively challenging Romney about health care. Romney was going through his standard defense of his health-care plan, saying it was right for Massachusetts but not for other states. Santorum wasn’t buying it: “Think about what that means going up against Barack Obama ... You are going to claim [about the Affordable Care Act], ‘Well, it doesn’t work and we should repeal.’ And he’s going to say, ‘Wait a minute, governor. You said it works well in Massachusetts.’ Folks—we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom ... It’s going to be on your ballot as to whether there should be a government mandate here in Florida. According to Governor Romney, that’s OK.”[...]

On the substance, there is virtually no difference between the bills. Well, OK, there are two differences. No. 1 is that Romney did not vastly expand Medicaid in constructing his bill. No. 2 is that Romney did not raise taxes to pay for his bill. Now, both of those differences sound like they reflect very well on Romney—he didn’t expand a big-government program that most people associate with poor folks and therefore do not like, and he didn’t raise taxes.

But why didn’t his bill do either of those things? It didn’t expand Medicaid, because governors have no right to expand Medicaid. And he didn’t raise taxes because—ready?—the federal government paid for about half of it ($385 million, largely in Medicaid money). And the federal government paid for about half of it largely because of the efforts of ... Teddy Kennedy, Romney’s great ally in putting the bill through. Jon Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economist who worked on Romney’s bill, has said, with only slight exaggeration: “They’re the same fucking bill. He [Romney] just can’t have his cake and eat it too. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying. The only big difference is he didn’t have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes.”[...]

So Santorum was right Thursday night. Nominating Romney is giving up the issue, especially if the Supreme Court upholds the mandate. Obama probably can’t win the argument, but if his campaign handles the issue artfully, he can plant doubts in conservative and swing voters’ minds about Romney’s actual beliefs on the matter, which will play strongly into what presumably will be a key Obama theme of Romney as the say-anything candidate. Obama should even use Pawlenty’s little portmanteau. After all, it’ll be no loss to him if voters think of the plans as similar; making conservatives gnash their teeth is the point. [emphasis mine on the bold part]

Socialized medicine in the crown jewel of socialism and the welfare state. Health care is one sixth of the U.S economy, and with the passage of Obamacare the government is on track to slowly gain control of the vast swath of the economy and people's lives. Having this new entitlement will have a corrupting effect on the character of the American people by turning the society into an entitlement society. All one has to do is to look at the riots in Greece to see what a society that looks to the government to provide all of their needs leads to. If one agrees, like Romney, with the premise that government should be providing people with health care, then the government is justified in telling people what they can or can not eat and a whole list of other lifestyle choices. Nominating a candidate who supports government run health care would be a disaster for staving the tied of socialism in America and the end of the Republican party standing for personal liberty, limited government, and free markets. I believe the Republican party has already stopped a long time ago being the party that stands for these principles. Americans no longer have a choice in the direction the country is headed. This years election is shaping up to only offer Americans only with the choice of the speed that we are headed towards the socialist-welfare-state. I can not vote for Romney.