Obama could learn a thing or two about health care reform from Massachusetts. One, time is not the enemy. Two, neither are the Republicans.

Mr. President, what's the rush?

Obama could learn a thing or two about health care reform from Massachusetts. One, time is not the enemy. Two, neither are the Republicans.

By Mitt Romney

Because of President Obama's frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track

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(Now insured: Francisco Diaz of Boston consults with nurse practitioner Anna Hackett Peterson./Josh T. Reynolds for USA TODAY; Mitt Romney./AP)

Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

No other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured as Massachusetts. The bill that made it happen wasn't a rush job. Shortly after becoming governor, I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to insure all our citizens. It took almost two years to find a solution. When we did, it passed the 200-member legislature with only two dissenting votes. It had the support of the business community, the hospital sector and insurers. For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.

Massachusetts also proved that you don't need government insurance. Our citizens purchase private, free-market medical insurance. There is no "public option." With more than 1,300 health insurance companies, a federal government insurance company isn't necessary. It would inevitably lead to massive taxpayer subsidies, to lobbyist-inspired coverage mandates and to the liberals' dream: a European-style single-payer system. To find common ground with skeptical Republicans and conservative Democrats, the president will have to jettison left-wing ideology for practicality and dump the public option.

The cost issue

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.

When our bill passed three years ago, the legislature projected that our program would cost $725 million in 2009. At $723 million, next year's forecast is pretty much on target. When you calculate all the savings, including that from the free hospital care we eliminated, the net cost to the state is approximately $350 million. The watchdog Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concluded that our program's cost is "relatively modest" and "well within initial projections."

And if subsidies and coverages are reined in, as I've suggested, the Massachusetts program could actually break even. One thing is certain: The president must insist on a program that doesn't add to our spending burden. We simply cannot afford another trillion-dollar mistake.

The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy. But overall, health care inflation has continued its relentless rise. Here is where the federal government can do something we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.

At the core of our health cost problem is an incentive problem. Patients don't care what treatments cost once they pass the deductible. And providers are paid more when they do more; they are paid for quantity, not quality. We will tame runaway costs only when we change incentives. We might do what some countries have done: Require patients to pay a portion of their bill, except for certain conditions. And providers could be paid an annual fixed fee for the primary care of an individual and a separate fixed fee for the treatment of a specific condition. These approaches have far more promise than the usual bromides of electronic medical records, transparency and pay-for-performance, helpful though they will be.

Try a business-like analysis

I spent most of my career in the private sector. When well-managed businesses considered a major change of some kind, they engaged in extensive analysis, brought in outside experts, exhaustively evaluated every alternative, built consensus among those who would be affected and then moved ahead. Health care is many times bigger than all the companies in the Dow Jones combined. And the president is rushing changes that dwarf what any business I know has faced.

Republicans are not the party of "no" when it comes to health care reform. This Republican is proud to be the first governor to insure all his state's citizens. Other Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sens. Bob Bennett and John McCain, among others, have proposed their own plans. Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.

Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.

Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty Assholes

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2009/07/cambridge-police-profiling-still-a-grim-reality-for-harvard-faculty-assholes.html

Guest Opinion
by Professor John Evans Evans-John
Harvard School of Harvard Faculty Asshole Studies
Harvard University

When I first learned of the arrest of my colleague Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates after he stood up to the fascist jackboots of a declasse, ill-educated Cambridge police officer, I was of course angered -- but scarcely shocked. L'Affaire Gates simply aired, in public, the dirty 100-thread-count table linen of an American culture where Harvard faculty assholes still face a daily struggle against profiling, abuse, and insolence.

It will come as no surprise that Skip's arrest was the talk of the Douchebag Room at the Harvard Faculty Club last Friday. I and a group of colleagues had assembled for our weekly lunch; I opted for their competently-prepared Ahi Tuna Tartare and an amusing glass of '05 Hospices de Beaune Premier Cru Cuvee Cyrot-Chaudron. I had noticed that the Franz Fanon Memorial Booth -- Skip's long-reserved lunch spot -- was uncharacteristically empty, and asked our waiter Sergio for an explanation.

"Professor Skeep, he no is come today," said Sergio. "I tink he is in the jail."

Our table exchanged knowing glances, for we knew immediately that Skip was only the latest victim of a system that singles out the Harvard faculty asshole for stigmatization and unequal justice. It is a system that all of us knew too well, and provided an opportunity for an open conversation about our shared experiences as Harvard faculty assholes in America while waiting for Sergio to bring the dessert cart.

One after one came the cascade of stark stories: the rolled eyes of our department secretaries. The Spanish language mockery of our office janitors. The foul gestures of drunken strap-hanging Red Sox lumpenproles aboard the MBTA. The frequent police stops on the highway to Cape Ann and Martha's Vineyard for "Volvoing While Asshole." And then there are the insulting media stereotypes, where we are routinely caricatured as pompous, effete, self-important, irrelevant elitists. All, I might add, by a motley collection of lowbrow inferiors, few of whom have ever published in a peer-reviewed journal. Let alone edit one.

Sometimes it even comes at the hand of self-styled "peers" from D-list state ampersand institutions. One colleague recounted the tale of his restroom confrontation with a Texas A&M professor at a national academic conference last year. After relieving themselves at adjacent urinals, my colleague noticed the oaf leaving hastily for the plenary session and decided to gently point out his hygienic forgetfulness. "A Harvard man washes his hands after urinating," he said. "And an Aggie don't piss all over his hands, asshole," came the reply.

A female colleague from the English department recalled a recent incident along the Charles River jogging path during her regular morning run. A confused passer-by rudely interrupted her progress and requested directions, as if my colleague were some sort of lowly campus guide or untenured adjunct. "Where does this street go to?" she demanded. Naturally, my colleague took the opportunity to correct her, noting that "at Harvard we do not end our sentences in prepositions."

"Okay, Where does this street go to, asshole?" barked the interloper. Needless to say, my colleague's daily morning runs have since been replaced with tear-filled visits to the Faculty Asshole Self Esteem Counseling Center.

For untold hundreds of Harvard faculty assholes such indignities are, sadly, still part and parcel of being "The Other." As Associate Director of the School of Harvard Faculty Asshole Studies, I have worked to institute policies to insure that Harvard maintains a nurturing environment for all assholes in our community, be they faculty, students, or alumni. Some progress has been made, such as Harvard's mandatory sensitivity and deference training program for all incoming freshassholes. But such internal programs do little to address the impertinence and discrimination we still face outside campus. Some have suggested that we involve the Cambridge Police Department in an educational outreach program, but in my experience the CPD is among the worst offenders.

Case in point: last winter I was slated to deliver the keynote address for an intradepartmental asshole colloquium at Lowell House. Running late, I temporarily parked along Plympton. As I emerged from my Audi, I discovered that I had captured the unwelcome attention of a CPD officer. "Hey Buddy, is that your car?" he barked.

"Why? Because I'm a Harvard faculty asshole in America?" I cleverly retorted.

"No asshole, because this is a snow route and you can't double park here," he sneered, concocting a flimsy excuse for his continued harassment. "You have to move it now."

"That's Professor Asshole to you, you fascist townie," I explained, tossing him the Audi's remote-start key. "Need a valet? Call your mother at the brothel."

It doesn't take an experienced asshole rights activist to tell you what happened next: my Audi was on its way to impound while I rode to the Cambridge Police Station in the unheated vinyl rear seat of Bull Conner's squad car. To add insult to injury, the desk officer refused my request for a dignified background bookshelf for my booking photos.

Thankfully the Constitution still allows even Harvard Assholes a bare modicum of human rights, so I used my allotted phone call to alert the Dean and the Faculty Grievance Committee to my plight. In those 35 excruciating minutes I wasted away waiting in that stark cell, I wrote the opening chapter of "Letters From a Cambridge Jail," my forthcoming scholarly magnum opus on the grim legacy of Asshole oppression in America.

Eventually my arrest record was expunged and I agreed to meet the loathsome arresting officer at President Faust's office for a conciliatory off-record "beer chat." As the University Counsel had predicted, the lure of free limitless alcohol proved irresistible to the simpleminded Irishman, and he was soon happily signing confessions of guilt and abject apologies. Still, even after he was fired, I was left to pick up the pieces of my shattered psyche.

As I recounted the details of that unpleasant encounter to my colleagues, a few wondered aloud if we were not better served by changing the system gradually. Then our eyes turned to the stately historic portraits of the Harvard faculty assholes who came before us, hanging in silent judgment on the Douchebag Room walls; Schlessinger, Galbraith, Leary, Cornel West, Alan Dershowitz, Theodore Kaczynski. Would these great assholes have accepted complicit silence in the face of crude police insolence? How will we be remembered by future generations of Harvard faculty assholes who will battle future generations of Cambridge police and parking enforcement officials? Where is Sergio with the damned dessert cart?

Some suggest that the election of President Obama proves that America's prejudice against Harvard assholes is a quaint relic of the past. But for those of us who live with it every day, the evidence shows the opposite. And it isn't just Harvard assholes suffering the cold, rude hand of uppity townie privilege. Other, if less endowed, asshole faculties suffer similar oppression; in the southern Lacrosse fields of Duke, in the west coast arugula farms of Stanford, at Northwestern, where ever Northwestern is.

No, we must not be silent. That is why I have used a portion of my class action windfall against the Cambridge Police department to produce a shocking new documentary film, "Asshole Like Me," detailing the courageous plight of the tenured Sphincter-American community. It premiers this Friday at the Science Center. Get your tickets now -- with free beer on tap, demand will be high!

Romney on Obama's Push For Health Reform: Slow Down

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 4:19 PM

By Katie Connolly

In the last two weeks, political commentators have expressed doubts over President Obama's time frame for healthcare reform. Meanwhile, even some Democrat lawmakers appear to be getting cold feet. In response, Obama is relentlessly pitching his plan. He has spoken about healthcare on eight out of the last nine days, and he's scheduled to hold a town hall meeting on the topic this Thursday. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is one of the few politicians in the country with first hand experience of steering major health care reform through the legislative process. The reforms he enacted in Massachusetts have been critizied for being costly, but they've also managed to extend coverage to a significant number of uninsured people. By 2007, the proportion of uninsured people in Massachusetts was the lowest in the country.

I spoke to Romney about his experience with healthcare reform this morning.  His cautionary words for Obama? Slow down.  Here are some excerpts from our conversation:

What do you think needs to happen over the next couple of weeks if President Obama's deadline for healthcare reform is to be met? 

I think the President ought to hit the reset button. I think it is critical that he have the participation, involvement, and support of people on both sides of the aisle, as well as people in various sectors of the health economy. If we are going to have a dramatic shift in the nature of so large a part of our economy  then it needs to be something that has been thoroughly vetted and has received great support. Out of a desire to move very quickly, while his support is highest, he has skipped the critical steps of educating, involving, and evolving his own plans to meet the perspectives of the great majority of our citizens.

It sounds like you are encouraging the President to slow down. Aren't there risks in delaying?

He's in a very difficult position. We faced a very similar question [in Massachusetts] as we began our process. We spent over two years putting together a health care plan and then building support for it on both sides of the aisle - working with hospitals, providers, doctors, business groups, labor groups, advocates for the poor. We involved all of these parties, and it took a long time, but what we ended up with was a bill that passed the legislature - if you combine the House and the Senate - 198 to 2. 

What lessons can be gleaned from your experience in Massachusetts?

After we crafted the architecture of our plan, the first person I went to was Ted Kennedy. He and I met numerous times and what we fashioned was not perfect in either one of our eyes, but we worked together, because only together could we know that we would have the support of all the parties necessary to make it work.

The states are laboratories of democracy. Well, our state passed a bill. It's been in place now for several years. Have they studied it? Have they spoken with the Republicans and Democrats in Masssachusetts? Have they spoken with hospitals? Doctors? Have they sent the GAO there to take it apart to see what is working well and what is not? Nobody has given me a call, except Republicans. I've received no calls from Democrats saying what do you think about it? What would you do differently if you were to do it today? There's a whole series of things I'd do differently. And yet, there seems to be such a rush to act. I understand that President Obama wants to get this done in his first term, but more important than getting it done in the first year is getting it done right, before he is out of office. There is time here to get it done right.

In terms of the reform proposals before Congress, what do you see that you like and dislike so far?

I'm not happy that the President wants to provide a so-called public option. There is no need for the government to become an insurance company. I'm convinced, as many before me have said, that this is a step towards a single payer system; that it will result in billions, if not hundreds of billions, of subsidies down the road and a new entitlement, which is one of the last things America needs right now. On the other hand I am happy that he is actually working to reform healthcare. It's important for us to get everyone insured. It's important that there be an effort made to reduce the excessive inflation in the healthcare sector. 

How well do the current proposals deal with reducing costs?

The legislation has almost nothing to do with cost reduction. Nothing I have seen in the bills that are being discussed by the Democratic leadership suggests that there will be a significant change in health inflation. 

This is an extraordinarily important topic and one for which there is a great deal of information around the world. Normally, if this were private enterprise, you would spend a great deal of time with brilliant analysts, looking at alternatives, evaluating lessons from foreign places, and perhaps even experimenting with some alternatives before unleashing them on the entire US economy. Healthcare reform is a matter that should be focused on allowing our citizens to have better health at more reasonable cost, as opposed to being thought of as a political success or failure. We really can't afford a lot of trillion dollar mistakes.

What do you think the President's message to the American people should be when he speaks on Wednesday night?

I don't presume to give the President advice. I can say that the campaign promise that President Obama made to work on a bipartisan basis and to change the atmosphere in Washington is something which I think America is still hoping to see, particularly in health care. It is just not consistent with his original vision to anticipate jamming through a piece of legislation which has numerous flaws, and which can only receive the support of his own party if members of that party have had their arms twisted into knots. That is not going to be the right kind of answer to America's health care needs. 

Governor Mitt Romney on the Current Environmental Debate

Friday, Feb 23, 2007

 

Boston, MA – Today, Governor Mitt Romney issued the following statement on the current environmental debate:

 

"Governor Mark Sanford is right. Unfortunately, some in the Republican Party are embracing the radical environmental ideas of the liberal left. As governor, I found that thoughtful environmentalism need not be anti-growth and anti-jobs. But Kyoto-style sweeping mandates, imposed unilaterally in the United States, would kill jobs, depress growth and shift manufacturing to the dirtiest developing nations."

 

"Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore. Instead of sweeping mandates, we must use America's power ofinnovation to develop alternative sources of energy and new technologies that use energy more efficiently."

It takes a village?

Reasons to disagree

1. People who say, "It takes a village" really want power. They don't think you should be allowed to run your life the way you want to, and so they want to get groups together, and then they want to lead that group's decisions. They people to make decisions as cities, towns, and governments, not individuals and families, because if we let individuals and families make decisions, they don't get to be involved, but they can get their hands into government.