Even Mittsy's Team Says He Lied

Mittsy was so proud of RomneyCare that he had
it added to his official portrait, in front of Ann's piture.

So, the debate is over and there are lots of folks talking.

Romney wiped the floor with Obama.

Obama would rather have been at home with Michelle.

Mitt Romney was all lies and no substance.

Yeah, that last one really has the ring of truth to it, especially in one instance, when Mittsy claimed, about his healthcare plan, “Number 1: preexisting conditions are covered under my plan.”

Um, but that was a lie, and Mittsy’s own team identified it as a lie right after the debate. Okay, so maybe they didn’t use the word “lie.” See, what they want you all to know, is that if you’ve been uninsured at any point in the past couple of years, you’re not protected under Romney’s plan. So, if you haven’t had health insurance and you, oh, let’s say, have cancer, too bad. No insurance for you!

And that means that some 89 million Americans are not entitled to healthcare under Mittsy’s plan. Of course, I’m guessing that those 89 million fit right into the 47% that Mittsy’s doesn’t give a rich rat’s ass about.

But Mittsy also said something else that night about health care that matters much more, but is getting much less attention: “The best course for health care is to do what we did in my state: craft a plan at the state level that fits the needs of the state. And then let’s focus on getting the costs down for people, rather than raising it with the $2,500 additional premium.”

Sounds like Mittsy wants all states to follow his RomneyCare plan from Massachusetts, but when you actually read Mittsy’s “policies”—and let’s stop for a quick giggle break right there—Mittsy seems to want to make it impossible for any state to follow Massachusetts’s example, and maybe even make it impossible for Massachusetts to keep the very plan Romney passed going.

From Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog:

The key question for any health-care plan is how are you going to pay for it? The Massachusetts plan used three funding sources.

The first—and, in some ways, the most important—was a $385 million annual payment then-Sen. Ted Kennedy had negotiated for the state’s safety net hospitals. President George W. Bush wanted to end the payment. That set off a panic in Massachusetts, and led to Romney and Kennedy going to the Bush administration and making a deal: Massachusetts could keep the money if they put it towards a universal health-care plan. Oh, and they needed to come up with that plan soon.

This was the threat that forced Romney and the state’s Democrats to pass a plan, as not passing a plan would mean losing billions in free federal money.The state also found two other funding sources. They covered absolutely everyone they could cover in their Medicaid program so they could get the most generous possible match from the federal government. Right now, Medicaid is helping Massachusetts cover kids and adults up to 300 percent of the poverty line—an incredible deal.

Finally, Massachusetts had imposed a tax to reimburse hospitals for the care they provided to the uninsured. Romney took the money from that tax and put it toward the law.

That’s two pots of federal money and a tax. So how much of Romney’s proposal relied on these funds? “100 percent,” says Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who helped Romney design the law. “That was my whole job. Saying whether we could fit what he wanted to do within those three funding sources.”

The legislature ended up adding a bit of general revenue to the law. But the fact remains: The Massachusetts law relies on federal dollars and state taxes.But Romney’s health-care proposal doesn’t make it easier for other states to follow the Massachusetts example. It makes it almost impossible. He’s not offering states access to federal funds for universal coverage. Here’s what he’s doing:

“I would like to take the Medicaid dollars that go to states and say to a state, you’re going to get what you got last year, plus inflation, plus 1 percent, and then you’re going to manage your care for your poor in the way you think best.”

Sounds kinda good, except that it cuts some $600 billion from Medicaid, and that’s not taking into consideration that a Romney White House would repeal the Affordable Care Act and, in doing so, push Medicaid cuts above $1 trillion.

Yup. That Mittsy. They say truth spinner, I say liar.