Ann Coulter Advocates Submission

Ann Coulter has written a column defending RomneyCare, and she is rightly drawing some heat for having completely omitted any mention of principled conservative objections. (Whoops)

There is a kernel of truth in what Coulter wrote, and it is hidden in the following text:

A governor can't repeal the 1946 federal law essentially requiring hospitals to provide free medical services to all comers, thus dumping a free-rider problem on the states.

It was precisely this free-rider problem that Romneycare was designed to address in the only way a governor can. In addition to mandating that everyone purchase health insurance, Romneycare used the $1.2 billion that the state was already spending on medical care for the uninsured to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance for those who couldn't afford it.

When she referred to that "$1.2 billion that the state was already spending," Coulter is not talking about Medicare or Medicaid, she is talking about Massachusetts' so-called Free Care Pool, which reimburses hospitals for the costs of providing care to people who didn't pay for it; free riders who are not covered by private insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid, but who are entitled to receive care in an Emergency Room due to a 1986 Federal Law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, EMTALA.

Although the Free Care Pool was a hugely expensive endeavor, it was not covering the cost of care provided to the free riders. There was a broad consensus in Massachusetts that something needed to be done about the Free Care Pool and the problem of uncompensated care and unmet medical needs in Massachusetts.

Despite her factual set-up, Coulter goes off the rails with the following sentiment:

What went wrong with Romneycare wasn't a problem in the bill, but a problem in Massachusetts: Democrats.

Blaming the failures of RomneyCare on subsequent Democratic tinkering would only work as an excuse if RomneyCare had been implemented in a land where redistributionist nanny state policymakers were the creatures of fiction, the bogeymen under the bed that parents warned their children about.

But no. Mitt Romney conceived RomneyCare in a state with a large and entrenched Democratic majority in the Legislature and in the population; it was inevitable that the Democrats would tinker with the plan, and for Romney to have given them such a lush and lucrative playground is inexcusable.

Furthermore, responding to the problems with the Free Care Pool by requiring everyone to purchase health insurance was a bad solution from the very first instance, and Coulter's rebuttal that "states have been forcing people to do things since the beginning of the republic" is an uncharacteristically sloppy answer. SINCE WHEN DOES ANN COULTER ADVOCATE SUBMISSION?

What else could Romney have done in Massachusetts? A real conservative would have used Massachusetts as a case study to argue for the repeal of EMTALA. A real conservative would have dismantled the Free Care Pool altogether. A real conservative would have let health care facilities triage the heck out of their ERs.

A real conservative would have foreseen that handing the liberal Massachusetts Legislature and bureaucracy a tool with which to impose its vision over people's life and death decisions was akin to handing a loaded revolver to a toddler. For Romney to claim that he couldn't see this coming suggests that he suffers from a profound lack of judgment, sufficient to make anyone reconsider whether he is fit to occupy the Oval Office.