What are you doing for the half million uninsured in Massachusetts


Hugh Hewitt: Now, this is a big headline. I just talked with a couple libertarian law professors, who I read a little bit of the Boston Globe story about your new program for health insurance, and they were a little stunned by it. This is very bold and very big. Why don’t you explain to people what you’re proposing for the half million uninsured in Massachusetts.

 

Governor Mitt Romney: Well, we found that about 40% of them could afford insurance, but choose instead to be free riders, which is not buy the insurance, but to show up at the hospital and expect free care. And we’re saying no, you can’t do that. You’ve got to get yourself some insurance, or pay for your care yourself. One or the other. But you can’t pass on your bills to the taxpayers. And then, people who really can’t afford to buy insurance, what we found out is that we’re spending about a billion dollars a year in our state, to give those people free health care. Because they can’t afford it, they show up, they get free health care. What we’re saying is we’re going to do something different. We’re going to take that billion dollars, and use it to help them buy private insurance policies from private companies, to give them basic care, preventative maintenance if you will care, as well as hospitalization. And by taking our billion dollars and using it to help people get insurance, we can insure every citizen in the state without any new taxes, without a government takeover like Hillarycare. Instead the private market can work to get every citizen in the commonwealth insured. Or, if they want, they can pay their own health care bill. But no more passing along the responsibility for your health care to somebody elese.

 

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