RW desperately embracing RomneyCare? Time to pull the rug out from under Mitt

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4. Romney Says He Cares. His Agenda Disagrees.

Romney Says He Cares. His Agenda Disagrees.

Jonathan Cohn

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But in politics empathy isn't simply about rhetoric. It's about policy. Here, again, is what Romney has proposed on health care.

1. Romney wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would bring Massachusetts-style reforms to the rest of the country and make insurance available to almost everyone.

2. He wants to hand Medicaid over to the states and then, in short order, dramatically reduce its funding.

3. He wants to change the tax treatment of company health benefits, in ways that could make it less available even to middle-class people in the long run.

These three changes—repeal of Obamacare, the end of Medicaid as we know it, and changes to the tax code—represent nothing short of a wholesale revolution in health care. ("Repeal and Reverse," as Ed Kilgore likes to call it.) The changes would arguably more sweeping than the ones Obamacare will cause. They would inarguably be more cruel.

How cruel? A brand new report from FamiliesUSA can give you some idea. Based on calculations by Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist, by 2016 the number of people without health insurance would be 40 million higher than it would be if the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

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http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/107827/romney-empathy-health-care-families-usa-gruber-million-uninsured-tax-credit