Mitt Romney, On 60 Minutes, Cites Emergency Room As Health Care Option For Uninsured (VIDEO)
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.
Hey, Money-Boo-Boo says "Let the bastards freeze in the dark", and let 'em go the Emergency Room for health care. No more pretense of "compassionate conservativism"....Just the standard GOTP applause-line: "screw 'em" "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
Jus' keep doin' what yer doin'....
Oh, the Electoral College projection is up to: Obama: 323 / RMoney: 191 (270 to win)
The 47% already go to the emergency room for non-emergency conditions. What's your point or do you have one beside the one at the peak of your forehead?
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
otisptoadwater wrote: The 47% already go to the emergency room for non-emergency conditions. What's your point or do you have one beside the one at the peak of your forehead?
You're a liar... Here's your 47%
For what it’s worth, this division of “makers” and “takers” isn’t true. Among the Americans who paid no federal income taxes in 2011, 61 percent paid payroll taxes — which means they have jobs and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax, they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid. Another 22 percent were elderly.
So 83 percent of those not paying federal income taxes are either working and paying payroll taxes or they’re elderly and Romney is promising to protect their benefits because they’ve earned them. The remainder, by and large, aren’t paying federal income or payroll taxes because they’re unemployed. But that’s a small fraction of the country.
Behind this argument, however, is a very clever policy two-step that’s less about who pays taxes now and more about who is going to pay to reduce the deficit in the coming years. Here’s how it works.
Part of the reason so many Americans don’t pay federal income taxes is that Republicans have passed a series of very large tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. That’s why, when you look at graphs of the percent of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, you see huge jumps after Ronald Reagan’s 1986 tax reform and George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. So whenever you hear that half of Americans don’t pay federal income taxes, remember: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush helped build that. (You also see a jump after the financial crisis begins in 2008, but we can expect that to be mostly temporary.)
Some of those tax cuts for the poor were there to make the tax cuts for the rich more politically palatable.
You're an even bigger liar....Romney admitted on Fox News that the 47% included combat troops and elderly.
Dugan: We are the parasites
My husband and I, recently retired, are among the people that Mitt Romney described with such disdain in the fundraiser video revealed last week. We are dependent on federal and state entitlements. Romney aimed his scorn at the "47 percent (of Americans) who pay no federal income taxes" and "feel entitled to health care," among other things.
Our household does not pay zero taxes, but our federal income taxes are a fraction of what we paid as full-time workers. Our Social Security income is untaxed. The substantial value of our Medicare is not subject to taxes. Both of us were helped over rough spots throughout our lives by federal entitlements. Without them, we would not be enjoying a middle-class retirement in our own home, and we are grateful to our country.
As recent retirees, my husband and I depend on Medicare because without it, comparable individual coverage would at our age cost more than $15,000 a year each. We also depend on the federal mortgage deduction and could not own the house we live in without a state benefit that allowed us to carry our low property tax rate to our current retirement home.
<snip>
Thus, Americans who in Romney's view "believe the government has a responsibility to them, who believe they are victims, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing" would help fund the yachts of billionaires through reductions in their food stamps or child care credits. Others of us might pay for their luxuries through limits on and fees for our Medicare and perhaps taxes on our Social Security.
Depending on which capital gains tax plan came to pass, Romney could personally benefit by millions a year, — a windfall he would no doubt feel entitled to. Maybe he'd use it to create jobs for us as his elderly maid and butler.
Hey, Gov. Money-Boo-Boo, this is why elitist "unemployed" scavengers like yourself, who make 14.1% on non-labor/wages investments, and who talk about 47% of the population as "parasites" (while hiding their money offshore) will NEVER get my vote.
Not that I expect Barry and team Chicago to know any thing about that...
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Sure, we are adding debt at the rate of one trillion dollars every nine months. Incomes are stagnant. But lets create Obamacare and give everyone health insurance passed without the American public even having a chance to read it. Yep, all these great new beneifits we can't afford. The next generation can pay for it all. Awesome plan DC!!!!
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Please try to stay on-topic, and shove your standard GOTP talking-points in the usual dark place...
You can put your usual Randroid "let them die" / GOTP applause-line: "screw 'em" "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives", in the same place.
Yes, it IS an awesome plan... And the more of it that kicks-in, the more the American people see what an empty shell your extremist teabagger party has become.
rofllol 
