WASHINGTON - A proposal by Mitt Romney to curtail Medicaid spending would dramatically undercut the way the Massachusetts health care overhaul law has achieved near universal coverage.
Although the specifics of Romney’s plan are not public, his overall intent - to rein in how much Medicaid money Washington sends to the states - would probably cripple the Massachusetts health care law, which was made possible by an expansion of Medicaid funding.
If Romney succeeds, the result could have an ironic twist: the
governor who ushered in the country’s first universal health plan would,
as president, put in place policies that could undermine one of his
signature achievements.
“What he’s proposing is in direct opposition to what he did as governor,’’ said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, executive director of Health Care for All in Massachusetts, citing the Bay State’s 98 percent coverage rate, the highest in the nation. “That kind of expansion would not have been possible under a block grant program,’’ as Romney has proposed. Block grants give states more flexibility in spending federal money, but restrict funding increases.
As governor, Romney worked closely with the late Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy to secure hundreds of millions per year in federal aid to realize their shared goal of access to health care for all. Expanding Medicaid coverage - and the flow of federal money that came with it - was a key underpinning of the state’s 2006 law....
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And that is not the only thing:
"Mitt Romney mum on how to regulate big banks" by Matt Viser and Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, May 02, 2012
WASHINGTON - Republican Mitt Romney is pledging, if he is elected president, to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, a position favored by donors on Wall Street who have sent millions the candidate’s way. But he is nearly silent on how - without the regulation - he would prevent Wall Street from once again engaging in the risky practices that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.
The gap in Romney’s platform - made more notable as, at every turn, he criticizes President Obama’s handling of the post-meltdown economy - has puzzled some economic specialists.
“He’s asking for permission to govern the country - but he’s saying
do away with the government’s response to the Wall Street crisis,’’ said
Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and
Financial Law at Boston University. “I’m no fan of Dodd-Frank, but I am a
fan of the notion that we have to do something.’’
Related: Senate Sends Along Financial Fraud Bill
Banking and investment firms lobbied heavily against the legislation as Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat of Connecticut, guided it through Congress. The industry objects to the new rules and restrictions, and Romney said in May 2011 that the law “scared the dickens out of the financial sector and caused banks to pull back from lending.’’ He has joined his Republican presidential rivals in calling for an outright repeal of the legislation.
Romney has criticized both the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is designed to monitor things like credit card applications and home mortgages, and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is supposed to monitor for systemic risks in the markets. Romney says both are too powerful and run by unelected bureaucrats.
Romney’s most detailed economic proposal, a 59-point plan released by his campaign in September 2011, denounces the Dodd-Frank bill as regulatory overreach. While calling for repealing and replacing the complex, 2,000-page law with a “streamlined regulatory framework,’’ it suggests only the broadest of themes: greater transparency of interbank relationships, enhanced capital requirements, and unspecified “provisions to address new forms of complex financial transactions.’’
Romney’s campaign did not respond to a list of questions from the Globe about specific ways he would change the law.
Lawrence Summers, a key White House economic adviser at the time the bill was drawn up and a former president of Harvard University, said that although there is room for debate about how Dodd-Frank should be implemented, it would be a grave mistake to wipe out the regulation without a strong replacement.
“The idea that we should go back to the regulatory status quo that preceded the worst financial crisis in 75 years seems on the edge of ludicrous,’’ Summers said.
This from the guy who was behind the repeal of Glass-Steagall and against regulation of the hedge funds he later fattened himself up on using the mortgage-backed securities swindle.
Over the edge of ludicrous into the abyss of absurdity.
Btw, Wall Street has been back to business as usual for years now.
Getting a repeal through Congress could be difficult for Republicans, even if Romney is elected president, because it is extremely unlikely Republicans will capture a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in the 2012 elections. Still, there have not been many strong public advocates for the law. Dodd retired several months after the law passed, and Frank is retiring at the end of this year.
“Dodd is gone, Frank is going, and the Obama administration has been relatively quiet on this issue,’’ said Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland and a former director at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “A lot of this goes back to the fact that I don’t think the public really ever understood what Dodd-Frank did.’’
See:
Wall Street Not Worried About Washington Regulations
Wall Street Writing Washington Regulations
It's a Wall Street government.
The biggest share of Romney’s campaign contributions come from sources in the investment, securities, and insurance firms. Through the end of March, Romney had collected $10.7 million, or 12 percent of his total, from individuals and organizations in the sector. That is more than twice the amount Obama has gathered from the sector.
Donors are also giving far more to the super PAC supporting Romney than they are to the one supporting Obama. Restore Our Future, which backs Romney, has received $22.2 million from Wall Street, 43 percent of its total. The super PAC Priorities USA Action, which backs Obama, has collected just $525,200 from Wall Street....
Don't worry; the gays will even thing$ up.
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