Mitt Romney is so far out of touch with the way most Americans live, he actually thinks you can pick and choose among health insurers when the truth is most Americans have only one choice, and that’s through their job. Aside from the fact that health insurance is an unnecessary encumbrance and expense and single-payer would be cheaper and better, only millionaires like Romney can ‘doctor shop’ in the way he describes. The upside of this, though, is that the Mittster finally revealed his true feelings about firing people — he really likes it. As Scott Keyes at Think Progress notes:
During a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire this morning, Mitt Romney told the crowd, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” The remark came as the Romney discussed purchasing health care services at a Nashua Chamber of Commerce event:
ROMNEY: I want people to be able to own insurance if they wish to, and to buy it for themselves and perhaps keep it for the rest of their life and to choose among different policies offered from companies across the nation. I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep people healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.
Here’s Romney’s ‘clarification’ of his “I like to fire people” remark, from the Boston Globe:
“I don’t want to live in a world where we have Obamacare telling us which insurance we have to have, which doctor we can have, which hospital we go to,” Romney said at the press conference. “I believe in the setting as I described this morning where people are able to choose their own doctor, choose their own insurance company. If they don’t like their insurance company or their provider, they can get rid of it.”
Romney proves how out of touch he is once again; most Americans who aren’t rich have health insurance corporations telling them what doctors they can see and what hospitals they can go to. In Canada, with single-payer health care, you truly can pick your own doctor and hospital, within reason. As to his line that you can get rid of your insurance company or health care provider, I suggest Mitt work a real job where your company has one insurer — you either take it or do without. There isn’t a lot of competition in health care services or fees for the Great Unwashed.
Then there’s this, from American Politics Journal, an anti-Romney video done by hard right-wingtips: