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The Morning-After Pill

By on January 11, 2012

Say what you will: Romney won an important and decisive victory in New Hampshire last night. None of his opponents have been able to mount a sustained alternative to his candidacy and time is running out. There will be no new faces in the race now. North Carolina may be a bloody bashing with the barbed-wire wrapped around fists, but it will take a major stumble by Romney to derail his express train to the nomination.

Romney increased his vote count from 76,548 in 2008 to 97,000+. Ron Paul went from 18,308 to more than 56,000. It is a primary in which Independents play a role. There is a red flag in the Paul numbers for Republicans.

What is it? One theory is that Barak Obama who rode to victory as a change agent in 2008 has not delivered on the dramatic  changes many voters wanted in Washington. They are dissatisfied and will be looking for another champion. Watching the Federal government try to function since 2008 has only added fuel to the fire. Young people especially are still shopping for that change agent and Ron Paul is the one candidate who talks about radical change to government in words other than bloviated clichés.

As a Libertarian, he would be expected to slash entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid under the banner of getting big government out of American lives. That’s why he runs as a Republican. And that’s also why he would be a problem for current seniors and low income Americans who need help during this sustained economic turn down. He also would curb the US war machine and get rid of the Federal Reserve System. For this reason he has no chance to pick up the Republican nomination, though he can give both candidates heartburn in November if he runs as a third party standard bearer.

It is becoming clear that Health Care Reform will not be a major issue in this election cycle,  unless the candidates get beyond Romney’s stated desire to repeal the 2009 Reform Act and Obama’s desire to preserve it. That is the bitter morning-after pill this Wednesday. There are many related issues that deserve discussion. Costs continue to go up. Affordability continues to go down. Third party payers will pass more and more of the costs of medical care on to patients who will have less and less ability to pay for it. This should have more interest to voters than whether the current assault on Romney’s record with Bain Capital LLC is an assault on Capitalism, a Republican sacred cow.

Therefore in these pages, The Post will start to stray away from the presidential campaign and look at issues that ought to be on the table in 2012 that affect the medical care you may or may not be getting in the future. However if by some odd chance one of the major political figures should say something thoughtful about health care and policy, we will pass it along.

Tom Godfrey

 

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