Apologists for Obama's wealthcare plan for the HMOs and health insurance companies have been citing Mitt Romney's Republican wealthcare plan in Massachusetts as a "success." They just don't say who it is a success for.

Thanks to Romney's wealthcare system, Massachusetts has the highest premiums in the country. Last fall those greedy corporations raised premiums 7-12%.

Corporate greed has gotten so insatiable that the state of Massachusetts is considering loosening up on the fines imposed on people who can't afford insurance. (Boston Globe 3/12/10)

State regulators said yesterday that they will probably change the complex formula they use to determine how many Massachusetts residents face a tax penalty for not having health insurance, because spiraling costs are making coverage unaffordable for too many people.

Each year, the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector Authority board updates the formula it uses to determine whether health insurance is affordable for individuals, couples, and families and whether people in each group should face a tax penalty for not having coverage.

The state’s landmark 2006 health law requires nearly everyone to have health insurance or to pay a stiff tax penalty.

The "spiraling costs" are for insurance premiums. The costs of care haven't changed much at all. Romney's wealthcare plan has been such a disaster that even he is starting to disown it.

Keep in mind that fact that HMO and health insurance premiums have very little to do with actual costs. The costs of care provided are only a fraction of the money collected by these larcenous corporations. The only restraint on premiums is what these evil corporations think they can get away with.

As I have pointed out before, if Obama's fines for people who can't afford the defective products of the HMO/health insurance industry are allowed to go into effect as scheduled in 2014, the result will by dramatic increases in insurance premiums. Sadly, the only restraint on outlandishly high premium prices is the ability for some people to opt out. Without that, the sky is the limit for these corporate thieves.

Obviously, Medicare for All or some other single payer plan is the only real solution to the lack of care and wildly exaggerated prices people are facing in our country. The only obstacles are bought politicians like Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, John "Keating Five" McCain, and the rest of the crooks in DC.

Photo: madhavaji

 

This, from the 12/16/07 online edition of the New York Times:

With just weeks left before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8, Mr. Huckabee has climbed to near the top of a crowded Republican field. But he may have given his rivals an opening when he decried what he called “the Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality.” Writing last week in the journal Foreign Affairs, he said, “American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out.”

Perhaps sensing that Mr. Huckabee might have offended the core conservatives vital to securing a Republican nomination, Mr. Romney pounced.

“That’s an insult to the president, and Mike Huckabee should apologize to the president,” Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said Sunday on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.”

In an earlier appearance in Humboldt, Iowa, Mr. Romney was even more scathing. “I can’t believe he’d say that,” he said. “I’m afraid he’s running for the wrong party.”

Romney wants to make it clear to GOP primary voters that he is Bush's biggest sycophant. But, Huckabee was quick to minimize any independence from Bush:

Mr. Huckabee, in a CNN appearance apparently added belatedly to his schedule, sought to explain. “I didn’t say the president was arrogant,” he said. “I said that the policies have been arrogant.”

Genuflecting to an incompetent, unelected tyrant is still the order of the day in the GOP.

How pathetic!

In a previous post, I pointed out the moral and ethical issues involved in Mitt Romney's speech attacking atheists while defending his Mormonism in the name of tolerance.

American Atheists, in their 12/6/07 press release, made an argument against it in terms of practical, electoral politics.

Ellen Johnson, President of American Atheists, said that Romney "is no John Kennedy when it comes to the First Amendment."

"His speech was a 'pitch' to the religious right which already has too much political clout in this country," said Johnson. "Like other candidates, Romney is overlooking the 13% of Americans who profess no religious beliefs, and will voting their principles next November."

Johnson added that Romney "drapes himself in the mantle of religious self-righteousness, and then gives token mention to the First Amendment."

Dave Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists said that "while there should be no religious test for public office, public officials -- including the President -- take an oath of office to defend the Constitution, not preach from some holy book like the Bible or the Koran."

"The President is supposed to represent all of the people in this country, not just the minority who say they go to church once a month," said Silverman. "Romney ignored America's Atheists and other secularists, and he -- along with any other candidate who makes the same error -- is missing out on millions of potential votes."

Romney's efforts to pander to the Christian Right will backfire in at least two different ways.


1) The speech will primarily serve to remind fundamentalist Christians that Romney belongs to a non-Christian faith.

2) The speech will alienate freethinkers, a large voting block in our society.

Mitt Romney is getting desperate to appeal to the Christian Taliban, many of whom don't want him because he is a non-Christian. He has responded to this in a suck up speech. Romney, the crafty politician, knows you cannot pander effectively to religious extremists without attacking non-believers. He certainly gave them some red meat.

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

In the real world, you can not be free on the subject of religion unless you are free to opt out entirely. However, facts like that make no difference to someone who wants to argue that you need to be religious to have a legitimate role to play in politics.

Romney's hateful rhetoric does not end there.

Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

This is transparently hateful against atheists.

It also is misogynistic. Equating the anti-choice movement, a jihad to reduce women to the legal status of breeding animals, with the abolition and civil rights movements is a truly nasty attack on women. It also is an incredibly racist insult to all African-Americans.

Romney then attacked separation of church and state, except where he finds it personally convenient.

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

The notion of secularism being a "religion" is downright silly. It also is a favorite talking point of the Christian Taliban.

Romney also advocates continuing many forms of discrimination against atheists.

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

In other words, Romney revels in the way those of us who are atheists are treated as second-class citizens in this country.

Romney is in a difficult position. He needs to convince the militant, Christian fundamentalists who make up the majority of GOP primary voters that they should be tolerant of him. Yet, he also needs to show them that he shares many of the other prejudices that have united the Religious Right.

This speech may help Romney is his political objectives for now, but it also shows why atheists, agnostics, and humanists would be out of their minds to vote for him.

Mitt Romney shows how truly nutty and anti-woman he can be in today's USA Today article:

"There's a lot more to being pro-life beyond appointing conservative justices."

"That, I will do," promised Romney. "I like Roberts and Alito, I like Thomas and Scalia. I like that kind of thinking on the bench, and that's the kind of justice I will appoint."

That makes if official. The Christian religious extremism we have seen under Bush would be replaced by Mormon religious extremism under Romney.

Don't assume Romney is a moderate because he was Massachusetts' Governor. The real Romney is far, far to the right.