Romney fleshes out health care plan

STEVEN R. HURST

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Repub­li­can chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney dis­closed on Sun­day that he would keep sev­eral impor­tant parts of Barack Obama’s over­haul of the Amer­i­can health care sys­tem, alter­ing ear­lier vows for a blan­ket repeal of the president’s most sig­nif­i­cant leg­isla­tive achievement.

As if to acknowl­edge the grow­ing impor­tance of the United States’ aging pop­u­la­tion, health care was much on the minds of both can­di­dates over the week­end as polls show an upswing in sup­port for Obama fol­low­ing the Demo­c­ra­tic National Convention.

Obama was draw­ing new atten­tion to Romney’s plans to alter Medicare, the gov­ern­ment health insur­ance sys­tem for the elderly, hit­ting the issue hard in Florida, a swing state with a vast pop­u­la­tion of retired Americans.

Real­iz­ing his poten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­ity on health care issues, Rom­ney spelled out more details for the first time on what he fore­sees as his vision.

“I say we’re going to replace Oba­macare. And I’m replac­ing it with my own plan,” Rom­ney said. “And even in Mass­a­chu­setts when I was gov­er­nor, our plan there deals with pre-existing con­di­tions and with young people.”

Those are two of the most pop­u­lar pro­vi­sions in the hard-fought Obama over­haul, and Rom­ney adopted them in an inter­view aired on NBC television’s “Meet the Press” Sun­day morn­ing. Obama’s over­haul bans insur­ance com­pa­nies from refus­ing to cover peo­ple with pre-existing med­ical con­di­tions and allows young peo­ple to remain cov­ered under their par­ents’ plan until age 26.

“Of course there are a num­ber of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place,” he said. “One is to make sure that those with pre-existing con­di­tions can get coverage.”

Rom­ney also moved to blunt Obama’s attacks on the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts governor’s plans for fur­ther cut­ting taxes, say­ing his pro­pos­als would pay for cuts in over­all tax rates by clos­ing loop­holes for high income taxpayers.

“We’re not going to have high-income peo­ple pay less of the tax bur­den than they pay today. That’s not what’s going to hap­pen,” he said, respond­ing to Demo­c­ra­tic claims that Romney’s plan would result in even more tax cuts for the mil­lion­aires like himself.

When pressed, how­ever, Rom­ney declined to pro­vide an exam­ple of a loop­hole he would close.

While Obama was con­tin­u­ing his two-day, post-convention swing through Florida, Rom­ney headed to church in Boston on a day off from campaigning.

In Florida, a crit­i­cal state where older vot­ers and work­ers approach­ing retire­ment hold sway, Obama on Sun­day out­lined a study by a Demo­c­ra­tic lean­ing group that con­cluded that on aver­age a man or woman retir­ing at age 65 in 2023, would have to pay $59,500 more for health care over the length of their retire­ment under Romney’s plan for over­haul­ing Medicare.

The num­bers are even higher for younger Amer­i­cans who retire later, the study found. A per­son who qual­i­fies for Medicare n 2030 — today’s 48-year-old — would see an increase of $124,600 in Medicare costs over their retire­ment period, accord­ing to the study.

While Romney’s changes to Medicare would affect future retirees, the study also said that Romney’s plan to get rid of Obama’s health care reform law could raise health care costs in retire­ment by $11,000 for the aver­age per­son who is 65 years old today by rein­stat­ing lim­its on pre­scrip­tion drug coverage.

The study was con­ducted by David Cut­ler, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor and health pol­icy expert who served in the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion and was Obama’s top health care adviser dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Cut­ler con­ducted the study for the lib­eral Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress Action Fund.

Rom­ney, endors­ing a plan put forth by his vice pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, wants to con­tain Medicare costs by giv­ing retirees voucher-like gov­ern­ment pay­ments that they could use to either buy reg­u­lar Medicare or pri­vate health insur­ance. But Cut­ler says older Amer­i­cans would have to pay more out of pocket to cover the ris­ing costs of health care.

Obama aides believe they suc­cess­fully forced Rom­ney to tem­porar­ily drop his empha­sis on the slug­gish econ­omy last month by rais­ing the Medicare issue in the wake of his selec­tion of Ryan as his run­ning mate. Rom­ney and Ryan coun­tered by argu­ing that Obama planned to cut more than $700 bil­lion in Medicare spend­ing over 10 years to pay for his health care plan. For­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, speak­ing at the Demo­c­ra­tic National Con­ven­tion, said Ryan’s bud­get plan cut Medicare spend­ing by the same amount.

Whether either side has gained polit­i­cally from the health care debate is unclear. But Repub­li­can ana­lysts say it did take Rom­ney off his eco­nomic focus, which they say is essen­tial for him to win the elec­tion, espe­cially after a bleak jobs report that showed mea­ger job growth and more unem­ployed peo­ple choos­ing not to seek work. Cam­paign­ing in Kissim­mee, Florida, on Sat­ur­day, Obama had already worked Medicare into his rally speeches.

“I want you to know I will never turn Medicare into a voucher,” Obama told a high-energy crowd of 3,000 at the Kissim­mee Civic Cen­ter. “I believe no Amer­i­can should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insur­ance com­pa­nies. After a life­time of labor, you should retire with dig­nity and respect.”

Cutler’s Demo­c­ra­tic affil­i­a­tions make him vul­ner­a­ble to accu­sa­tions of par­ti­san­ship. But much of his data are drawn from stud­ies by the inde­pen­dent Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office, which has pro­jected even higher costs to future retirees under a 2011 bud­get plan writ­ten by Ryan, now chair­man of the House Bud­get Committee.

The bud­get agency said future retirees would pay more under Ryan’s plan than if they went into tra­di­tional Medicare. By 2030, a typ­i­cal 65-year-old would be pay­ing two-thirds of his or her health costs, the agency said.

Posted by AP News on Sep 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.