Just once, it would be nice to have a Republican front-runner who isn’t a sociopath.
Romney talks about paying for health insurance as if it were the same as getting a pedicure, hiring an escort or getting the fancy wax at a car wash. It’s a luxury service being provided to him, and he doesn’t like it, he can take his business elsewhere. Romney’s is the language of a man who has never wanted for anything, never worried about where his next paycheck would come from, never worried about going bankrupt if he got sick.
I don’t understand the press this is getting. If you listen to what he said, he was essentially agreeing with the author you quoted – health insurance is too much like indentured servitude. You can only do business with the company your employer has chosen, and if you don’t like the way they treat you, that’s tough.
He was suggesting that if we did things differently (allowed people to buy their own health insurance), that it would be more like a service, it would be easier to switch if you were dissatisfied, and it would be more of an incentive for companies to treat their customers right.
It’s a hard point to argue with, which must be why everyone who talks about it twists it into something that’s easier…
I didn’t have Flash installed when I quoted the article and was working off a transcript. Having watched the video? Sure — the first minute is why I favor single-payer or competition among nonprofit insurance companies.
But Romney’s transition doesn’t make logical sense: we’ve tried the model where for-profit companies tried to keep people healthy for their own self-interest, and it largely failed to either keep people healthy or to keep people happy with their insurance. There’s a reason why “Fucking HMOs” was Helen Hunt’s biggest unexpected applause line.
Beyond that, it’s clear that Romney immediately realized he had committed a gaffe, and I agree with Digby’s conclusion about its psychological origins. I’ve never “fired” someone at a company where I discontinued service; I broke off my contracts with that company. I would be deeply disturbed to hear that my interactions with someone *had* gotten them fired from their job. It’s just not the way healthy non-sociopaths think about their financial relationships.
Of course, Romney thinks corporations are people, so maybe that has something to do with it.