Romney can't seem to get his story straight. Does the man have any core beliefs that can't be changed in a millisecond, depending on whose vote he wants at the moment? He reminds me of the Woody Allen character "Zelig," who had no personality/character of his own and would actually begin to look exactly like the person he stood next to. At any time, depending on who he was standing next to, he might become a Native American, an African American, a fat man, a thin man, a bearded man, etc. Looks like we have Zelig running for President on the Republican ticket.
Below are a few excerpts from the article. Full article can be read at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/23/mitt-romney-60-minutes-health-care_n_1908129.html
Mitt Romney, On 60 Minutes, Cites Emergency Room As Health Care Option For Uninsured
WASHINGTON -- Downplaying the need for the government to ensure that every person has health insurance, Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.
"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."
This constitutes a dramatic reversal in position for Romney, who passed a universal health care law in Massachusetts, in part, to eliminate the costs incurred when the uninsured show up in emergency rooms for care. Indeed, in both his book and in high-profile interviews during the campaign, Romney has touted his achievement in stamping out these inefficiencies while arguing that the same thing should be done at the national level.
And while Romney refused to agree on Sunday that the government's role is to ensure that every American has health care, he has endorsed such an idea in the past.
When asked in a March 2010 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" whether he believes in universal coverage, Romney said, "Oh, sure."
"Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way," he said.
And in a 2007 interview with Glenn Beck, Romney called the fact that people without insurance were able to get "free care" in emergency rooms "a form of socialism."
"When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is," he said at the time. "So my plan did something quite different. It said, you know what? If people can afford to buy insurance ... or if they can pay their own way, then they either buy that insurance or pay their own way, but they no longer look to government to hand out free care. And that, in my opinion, is ultimate conservativism."
Getting rid of high numbers of inefficient emergency room visits was actually a key goal of Romney's health care reform in Massachusetts, as he noted in his book "No Apology"
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Posted: 09/23/2012 10:12 pm EDT Updated: 09/23/2012 10:47 pm EDT