In the June 6 New Yorker, Ryan Lizza described what he called "Romney's Dilemma." The dilemma is that Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney once solved the problem of health care in Massachusetts. That might be a good thing -- in fact, Lizza considers it "the most significant bill of his career" -- except for the fact that he did it in the wrong way by today's standards for GOP candidates.
Romney's plan looks a lot like "Obamacare," the ultimate target for TEA Party types and therefore for Republicans in general. Essentially, it creates an open but regulated market for health care, thereby relieving the state of the burden of providing emergency (or even routine) health care in the form of emergency room services for the poor who can not afford to buy their own, or whose employers do not provide it for them. The key component in both plans is a requirement that everyone buy some form of insurance, and that's why TEA Partiers hate it.
The deep irony (or Orwellian nightmare, depending on your mood) of Romney's problem is that at the time he put the plan together, it was lauded by economic conservatives who saw it as a market solution to a government problem. And that's what it is. Now, however, it is depicted as socialism of the most sinister type.
This is creepy, and it represents the serious dysfunction of the Republican Party. Wack jobs a the forefront of the GOP are ignoring basic economic facts and riling up their constituents behind falsehood. The result is that we can not get behind a plan that could help solve two really serious problems simultaneously: the budget deficit and the health care crisis, which go hand-in-hand. Unless Obama, the Democratic leadership and some sane Republicans can get out and explain and defend this sort of thing to the public at large, we are all in trouble.
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