How are you going to pay for it Mitt? It is surely a better idea to leave it in the hands of the federal government than the hands of private companies.

The problem with a "mandate", like the one Senator Clinton proposes, is that it doesn't take into account the most important factor…cost.

A government mandate that simply says "Get Health Insurance, or else" as a means of covering the insured will be about as effective as a law commanding us to "Earn More Money" as a means of combating economic inequality and low wages.

We do need some financial aid for people who can't afford the entire cost, but the real solution is in higher deductibles which will lower premiums. If the average middle-class American was forced to care how much health care would cost them by having to pay the first $5000 or so out-of-pocket, people will really start to be savvy consumers. We'd stop paying $500 for a medical exam that only costs $200 to provide, or $3500 for minor surgery when another qualified doctor could do it for $2500.

Notice how cost-conscious and bargain-savvy people try to be when paying thousands of dollars for a car: they can do research, go to several dealers, check out different financint options, and look up the blue book values, all to save several hundred dollars.

If we paid the same attention to the cost of health care and actually acted like rational consumers instead of not caring about high costs "because the government will cover it" or "because it's all covered by insurance", then we would certainly see health care costs driven down relative to our wages, the same way the cost of a new automobile has come down relative to quality and wages.

On the other hand, imagine if the government took a more active role in buying cars for us…we'd all drive like teenagers because we don't bear any of the responsibility.

Uhm, yeah. Like I'm going to take anything seriously from someone who belongs to a religious group where outsiders are not allowed into their places of worship, they baptize the dead, and believe in having space babies.

This is a national problem, not a state problem. Romney should understand that insurance spreads the risk to lessen the individual risk and cost. What better way to spread the risk than a national plan, being the only industrial nation in the world without a natioanl plan has really helped us, it has of course decreased access to medical care for those without health insurance and increase the cost to those without health insurance. Under the current system who pays the full cost of mediacal care, those that have no insurance and can least afford it.

Afraid of not being treated if you are in need of care, when was the last time you were sick and walked into a vacant doctors office, you almost need an appointment to become ill. The last time you became ill after office hours, do I go to the emergency room or not, if they admit me find if not I get treated but I get slapped with a big bill my insurance company won't pay, if I wait it will get much worst than it is, this is a fine system we are currently under.

Gee, and I always thought the old notion of actually funding your own way through life was acceptable.

What a square I am for actually getting a job and working for a living, when some slick-talking politician promises to fund every aspect of my lifestyle from the government coffers.

"Uh, Senator Clinton, I'd like the Filet Mignon today… and please be a dear and chew that up for me, would you?"

Yes, but Hillary's plan is just like legally mandated car insurance. Whether you can afford it easily or not, you have to buy it. This is not what most Americans are expecting when they hear Universal Health Care. They're expecting "free" care, not to merely be ordered to buy health insurance.

This whole idea of health care by Hillary is disappointing. How can she not see the problems of government run universal health care? I lived in Germany for a number of years and their health care system is in pieces. Romney's idea is the best yet. It will benefit the most people without damaging them individually nor hurting them to much financially. Keep taxes down and take care of your self by buying private health insurance.

Both Obama and Edwards have better health care/insurance policies than what Clinton has just proposed. Check it out on their web sites.

The difference between Romney's plan and anything the Dems, including Hillary are offering is stark, and complete, and blatantly obvious. When Romney says its up to the states, what he's really saying is that it is up to the HMOs, the BIG INSURANCE companies that are channelling millions into his campaign.

By taking it out of the HMOS hands and putting Federal standards on insurance, we'd all be assured of paying lower rates and getting better care. What Clinton and other Dems like Obama have suggested is that there be caps on the amounts insurance companies can make and charge. There would be Federal standards for insurance much in the same way the FDA works for food.

With Romney's plan, everybody has to pony up to the insurance companies and they still get very little for their money. His way is all about greed, about making a profit off the broken backs of the ill and infirm.

Your health should be a right, not a for profit venture Mr. Romney.

You and your ilk disgust me in the way you pervert good ideas into your own propaganda just so you can keep getting that good ol' lobby money that's paying for your summer house in Switzerland.

Complainers all of you!!! At least Hillary was always for universal health care. I don't expect ANYTHING for free. Americans just complain about everything instead of looking at the pros and cons and deciding what is best for all of us. I, for one ame tired of paying for people who do not have health insurance and it is only getting more expensive. We need to rein in the insurance companies all they do is raise rates, deny people who have paid insurance if the treatment is something the insurance company thinks is too expensive.

I love Hillary and praise her for at least trying.

Hey Mitt,

Seems that people like you are for states's rights only as a modus operandi to deny help to those fellow Americans who need it.

Howzabout United We Stand?

Posted By Robert, SF, CA : September 17, 2007 3:08 pm

Hammer, meet nail. That one aspect seems to have bypassed some people.

Some people seem to have also missed the part that the government pays what individuals can't, meaning, everyone pays and the government picks up the difference. They also miss that the only tax increase to help fund the government portion is that on the wealthy - you know, Bush's base of haves and have-mores?

It's a sad state of affairs when the wealthiest country in the world ranks near bottom in terms of healthcare and any suggestion to change the status quo is met with wholesale criticism - not discussion or compromise but criticism.

And we wonder why we're so divided?

Hillary's plan isn't terribly horrid, but it's still on the wrong side of the ball. Mandate that people must have health insurance. Mandate that people on medicare or medicaid cannot smoke, drink, or be obese. Start forcing people who want free rides to pay their own way. One accident doesn't entitle you to a lifetime of sitting on your ass. Get a job, buy health insurance. I paid for private insurance for 2.5 yrs after school out of my own pocket. I sacrificed FUN things for NECESSARY healthcare. The truth is, Americans without healthcare CHOOSE not to have healthcare and then cry about it if they get sick.

MITT IS A FLIP FLOP ON ALL ISSUES…

Have you guys forgotten that Romney already got universal health insurance passed Massachusetts? Romney has credibility here, Clinton does not.

Also, scariest part of Clintons plan:

"bar insurance companies from charging people with greater health care costs more for their premiums"

WHAT!!!! How is that analogous to automobile insurance? With automobile insurance, if you are a high risk, YOU pay for it, your neighbor does not! With health insurance, if your neighbor is 200 pounds overweight, do you want to pay for it? How about if your neighbor smokes? That is what the markets should be deciding, not big government. Of course government may place some reasonable limitations on insurance premium factors but insurance companies need to be able to target demographics with lower rates just like automobile insurance markets. And consumers need to be able to say, "I can get a lower rate if I loose 10 pounds, stop smoking, get a group rate, etc."

With welfare, medicaid and the democrats health care plans, we'll NEVER have to get a job!

The government will care for us from the cradle to the grave!

No more working for a living!

Isn't Mitt one of the few candidates who have actually passed something to improve the health care situation for his state?

I don't particularly want politicians making decicions about my health care.

Now, this is a perfect example of CNN not doing it's homework. Hillary Clinton's proposed health care "reform" keeps Medicare, keeps Medicaid, keeps the recently passed and bankrupt prone prescription drug program, and keeps the haphazzard collection of private programs in place. What it does do, is add a $110 billion government subsidy; another pig trough from which the already bloated healthcare industry will feed.

Compare this with the true universal coverage programs of Scandinavian countries. Now, Sweden, had a population of 9,047,752 as of 12/31/2005. During that same year, the *total* cost for health care from their single payer system was $25.4 billion. This provided complete medical, dental, prescription drug and drable medical equipment (wheelchairs, etc.) coverage services for every man, woman and child in Sweden. And, by international measures, the health care quality there (and I lived there, so I know) is the best in the world.

Now, using a little easy math, we could figure out what it would cost us to impliment the same sytem here - that runs a litle less than $85 billion. That is the total. No Medicare, no Medicaid, no private health insurance whatsoever. And no prescription drugs or other ancillary expenses. That would be the sum total to cover every man, woman, and child in the U.S. with complete medical and dental coverage. And, I would like it noted, that would be roughtly $25 billion less than Hillary's government subsidy.

Insread of touting her plan, you ought to be lambasting it as a taxpayer subsidized payoff to the health care corporation that are supporting Ms. Clinton's candidacy. That all of the other Democratic candidates are rushing foreward to claim that this was originally their idea, is almost too awful to stomach. I really wonder if this collection of self serving swine genuinely believes that the voting public is so stupid as to buy into this boondoggle?

We need a single payer, universal health care plan following the prven Scandinavian model. Payoffs to the parasites in the health care industry don't cut it guys! We want them put out of business. They have no business making money off something so critical to the very survival of this country, off the human misery and suffering and very lives of our citizens.

When I lived in Upstate New York in the mid 80's a news report said 1/3rd of our medical cost was to protect the doctors and hospitals from the sharks (lawyers). To cut health cost we need tort reform and put a bunch of lawyers and insurance people in the labor force to replace the illegal aliens.
Civilian health care paid by the taxpayer should be no better than what our Armed Forces recieve with the months wait for seeing a specialist, rank (class) special treatment, not getting the latest drugs available to civilians, and an HMO program. The civilian world would not tolerate it. Also if a democrat says it will cost $110 billion then you can really count on it costing the taxpayers 6 to 8 times the estimate and it not helping the middle class with their high cost.

Yes Mitt, lets leave it up to the States. Like Utah, where they think that a 14 year old child, sobbing uncontrollably, is consenting to incest.

Yes, leave it to the states.

Hillary, Obama, or Edwards. No one has a perfect plan. But, atleast they are trying to help un-insured.
When 'W' spends 800 billion on the false war and when billions go in the pockets of Cheney's friends on no bid contracts, why are these people quiet? Mr. Romney is trying to please his ignorant crowd to win his nomination. Ignore him!

We should have the same health care our elected representatives have and if we didn't raid our treasury for giveaways to the wealthy and 'preemptive wars' we'd have plenty of money to pay for it.

Everyone is complaining about the government having too much control but neglect to acknowledge that the private market has had decades to address this issue and has failed. The best option they have come up with is savings accounts to pay for all of the things that the insurers won't cover. What a solution!

Republicans run on a platform that government can't run anything right. And then when they get into office, they spend their tenure doing a horrible job to prove it! I'd rather leave the job of running government programs to people who actually have an incentive to make government work efficiently and fairly, rather than those who have the opposite incentive.

I am 60 years old, not medicare age yet. I have worked all of my life, but also have had cancer twice, a stroke, paralysis, thryoidectomy and diabetes. I have tried to purchase health insurance, but have been rejected everywhere I go. Having universal care for the many who will soon find themselves where I am at is important. Quit falling into the line that leave it in the marketplace, because such a plan does not work. Insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies working jointly make sure the costs remain high to force us to purchase health insurance and then charge high prices to receive it! Where are you people…it is time to stop them lest we all lose out!

Why are so many, so obsessed with tearing down my beliefs? We are still a country that is free to worship our own God as we see fit, right? These often seen statements about my religion are absoluty not true. I am one of about twelve million church members who only has one wife, love my family and country, and I follow the teachings of my church to never say anything derogatory or unkind about another persons faith. You will never hear a Latter Day Saint say anything unkind in church or in public about another persons religious beliefs. Anyone in our faith who becomes involved in plural marriage, has any sexual relations outside of marriage, especially with a child, are immediately brought before a church disciplinary council and likely will lose their membership in our church. You will never find higher common standards anywhere in the world. If you are a true christian you will not have the desire to hurt or defame any of Gods children no matter how misplaced you may feel their beliefs to be. Our church president teaches us to hate the sin but love the sinner, a most Christlike attribute don't you think? As a result, even though you may despise me and want to take away my choice to love God and Christ as I see fit, I love you still and hope you feel the light of Christ in your life soon.

Lance from "Cally" and Cable "King" I realize you both hate Republicans and love Democrats, fair enough.

But don't let your ignorance get it the way of the truth. Romney worked with the DEMOCRATS in MASSACHUSETTS of all places to come up with a working plan that got passed.

The gist of the matter is a Republican with a WHOLLY Democratic legislature worked together to come up with a viable, do-able and PASSABLE plan and that should be the states "model" for all to look at and IMPROVE ON when any slight issues arise.

Wow, imagine working together for a common goal that benefits actual PEOPLE.

Yup, federally mandated programs work the best…just ask any Democrat about the "No Child Left Behind" mandate…you'll glow afterwards with their fantastic reviews.

Hillary's healthcare plan is more than just bad medicine, it's Communistic. Wake up!

Article in Tuesday's Boston Globe compares Clinton & Romney (as governer) plan on health care; more matches than misses - flip-flop or telling more lies? Remember he is a "life-long hunter" and the dog loved traveling on the roof of the car!

Romney is the hardest working, most presidential candidate on the ticket. He gets more than his fair share from bigots, and political foes.

But as a Republican:

What I see in Romney, is someone who loves America, really loves what she stands for and someone who will care about the well-being and successfulness of the Republican Party for some time to come. And if you see what he has done for numerous companies and the Olympics, you can see him infusing a lot of improvement and marketability into our party as well.

And Romney will find the most efficient way to do healthcare.

Makes sense to me. Give the states their rightful soverignty.

I chuckle at Mitt Romney's characterization of Hilary Clinton's proposed health plan as "Washington managed health care," utilizing "government insurance." I assume he is referring to the part of the plan that will broaden the current federal employees plan to cover other citizens. I got news for Mr. Rommney. I am a federal employee and my plan is with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, hardly Washington managed health care. But hey, why let the truth get in the way of a catchy campaign trail rhetoric!