Yes, Mr. Romney, Americans die for lack of insurance
Barb ShellyPoor Mitt Romney. In trying to be all things to all people on health care, he’s found himself stuck in a time warp.
The Republican presidential nominee, supposedly a new man after his sparkling debate performance last week, has not completely abandoned his clueless ways, as he revealed in an interview this week with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch.
While discussing the U.S. health care system, Romney amazingly and wrongly said that Americans don’t die for lack of health insurance.
“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’” he said.
“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.”
Oh yes we do, Mr. Romney. This nation has millions of people who become ill because they can’t afford preventive medicine. We have sick people who can’t get well because they can’t afford medications. We have people who live in pain because they can’t pay for treatments.
And yes, Mr. Romney, we have people who die sooner than they should because they don’t have insurance. Different studies have placed the number from 18,000 to nearly 45,000 people a year.
“He is ignorant of the facts,” said Dr. Sharon Lee, chief executive of Family Health Care, a clinic in Kansas City, Kan. “I see patients all the time who die or have very high morbidity because of a lack of insurance.”
We may pack a patient into an ambulance and rush to the hospital once the heart attack occurs, as Romney happily noted. But if that person is one of the 48 million Americans who are uninsured, we probably won’t pay for the blood pressure medication or the stent or the pacemaker that could have prevented the heart attack from occuring.
Lee spoke of just such a person.
The man lost a good job with health insurance because of a heart condition. He suffered terrible chest pains but avoided a visit to the emergency room, not wanting to burden his family with the bills that would result. When a relative finally coaxed him into Lee’s clinic, she took him immediately to a hospital.
“He had a cardiac bypass that afternoon and he died,” Lee said.
What kind of a health policy encourages people to wait until they are in crisis, and then, as Romney explained, “you go to the hospital, you get treated…and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital”?
Oh, wait. That’s the U.S. policy. Health care by default. The broken system that costs more and produces poorer results than most other industrialized nations.
The one that Romney signed landmark legislation to fix when he was governor of Massachusetts, and he worked with his legislature to design a system whereby nearly everyone would have insurance policies, some with the help of government subsidies, others prompted by employer and individual mandates.
The federal Affordable Care Act, modeled after the Massachusetts law, is designed to fix the same problems that Romney took on as governor.
But now Romney says he’ll repeal “Obamacare,” and he lends a clumsy endorsement to a status quo that isn’t acceptable to anyone.
Romney surely knows better. His work in Massachusetts shows he understands the benefits of getting people insured.
In the interview with the Ohio newspaper he proposed open enrollment periods in which people could purchase insurance without being denied for a pre-existing condition. As a fallback to the individual mandate, that’s not a bad idea. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger pitched it early in the health care debate.
But for every step forward on health care, Romney follows with two steps backward. And now he’s gotten himself stuck in the cruel and costly system that he once set out to fix.
To reach Barbara Shelly, call 816-234-4594 or send email to bshelly@kcstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @bshelly.
Mark Hastert
7 months, 2 weeks agoMitts positions are like playing “whack-a-mole”, he pops up with a new contradictory position every day. Apparently the strategy is to keep misrepresenting faster than fact checkers can fact check. You have to wonder if he actually has any core beliefs or a moral center.
George Hunsucker
Northland
7 months, 2 weeks agoAnother sob story without any facts… Can you get a new line ms. shelly????
You libs are a hoot….
Phil Cardarella
7 months, 2 weeks agoLet’s see: Romneycare is good policy — until we change its name to Obamacare, and then it is evil incarnate.
Look, Bill Clinton is right about Mitt: He will say anything to make the sale. Once you drive that car off the lot, you cannot bring it back — you’re stuck with it for four years.
Mark Hastert
7 months, 2 weeks ago“Another sob story”…..
Yes one that will be all too familiar under Romney/Ryan.
William R. Nelson
7 months, 2 weeks agoThe Elderly have MediCare (for now).
The poor have Medicaid.
Hospitals are forbidden from turning away people in need, regardless of ability to pay.
Many doctors I’ve spoken with offer substantial discounts for cash payment.
Discount prescription plans are widely advertised throughout the pharmaceutical industry.
Who can’t get medical treatment if they require it, Mrs. Shelly?
The GOP has had a 5 point plan floating about for almost a decade now. It’s one page long - not 40,000 pages.
And no IRS agents are required to implement it.
Joaquin X Santiago
7 months, 1 week agoEven if one is insured our system needs improvement. All studies indicate about two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies are a result of medical bills. Surprisingly, a large percent of those declaring bankruptcy for this reason also have some form of medical insurance. While we are able to provide the world’s best medical care, our delivery system is among the world’s worst.
Brandt Hardin
7 months, 1 week agoRepublicans would have us believe Obamacare is bad for America. Is there any doubt that a Romney administration would favor the rich and increase the income gap in our country while leaving millions of our citizens uninsured and unprotected? Mitt is a pariah in Mormon Clothing and will stop at nothing to expand an empire of greed for the rich in this country. Can his sacred Mormon underwear gain him enough donations to buy this election? See for yourself as Mitt dons his tighty-whities sent from the Good Lord Himself at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/05/mitt-romneys-magic-mormon-underwear.html
Michael L. Hays
7 months, 1 week agoA really fine column—well-written and factual and understanding of the plight of many people who are often invisible to those who scorn the needy.
David Creighton
7 months, 1 week agoMy Grandmother has just turned 90. Her and her husband worked their whole life and paid taxes. We as a family have done what we can to support her, but of course her medical costs rise with age. Ryan wants to just give everyone a voucher to buy insurance. What is it 8K 10K? What insurance company in the world would pick up my Grandmothers policy now?
Reginald Thornton
7 months, 1 week agoMr Creighton, I’m quite sure that if you are so aware of Ryan’s plan as to know that it uses vouchers, then you are also aware that it applies only future retirees, at least 10 years out or more. Therefore, you must also know it doesn’t apply to your 90-year old grandmother and “her husband” (an odd way to refer to your grandfather). Nice try, thanks for playing. Fail.
Reginald Thornton
7 months, 1 week agoDon’t know why I didn’t catch this before….
Romney: “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”
Shelley: Oh yes we do, Mr. Romney. This nation has millions of people who become ill because they can’t afford preventive medicine.
Insurance is not preventive medicine. Ms. Shelley has been brainwashed or is trying to brainwash us into equating the two. Does your auto insurance cover oil changes and parking tickets? Does your homeowner’s policy cover lawn maintenance or redecorating? Of course not.
So, why should health insurance cover well care? Why is that not a separate issue?
Brian K Kegerreis
7 months, 1 week agoSo lets be clear here. The evidence that people die because they don’t have health insurance is that a person chose not to get care because the didn’t want to pay the bill. Eventually he went in and got the care anyways (without insurance ostensibly) and then died. So the person did not die because they did not have health insurance. They died because they had a heart condition and chose not to get care. So this column is just more lieberal propaganda.