The Case Against Newt - Health Care
Jan 26, 2012 - OPINION
There is no shortage of areas on which to attack Newt Gingrich. He lobbied for drug companies to help pass Medicare Part D, but was carefull not to be legally classified as a lobbyist. His personal marriage problems are well known. He was also fined $300,000 for misleading an ethics committee that was investigating his use of a 501(c)(3) to finance classes he was teaching.
All of these are valid areas of criticism, but they don't break the false image that Speaker Gingrich is a strong conservative politician with a flawed personal past. Today, we present the case that Speaker Gingrich is not a conservative. He has proposed and supported liberal ideologies in health care and changed his views to accomodate what he now perceives as the majority viewpoint. This article uses the information provided in the unbiased page devoted the Speaker Gingrich's views and history in this area. To further support this claim, future articles will address his liberal stances on energy and the environment, the Paul Ryan Plan, and homeland security.
The evidence against Speaker Gingrich in the area of health care is staggering. It shows that after leaving Congress, Speaker Gingrich supported a mandate to purchase insurance or requiring that people post bonds to cover their health care costs. He also supported taxing some constituents to provide funds to poor people to purchase health insurance. These two pillars of a mandate and subsidies to chosen people are the core concepts of both ObamaCare and RomneyCare. Speaker Gingrich's support for these policies was not a passing fling or ideas he abandoned long ago. He supported and promoted them as early as 1993 and as late as 2011. When Congressman Gingrich saw the opposition of the Obamacare mandate as a key election point, he shifted his view and began to attack that position.
The first piece of evidence to support the claim that Congresman Gingrich supported mandates and subsidies is an April 2006 statement released by Speaker Gingrich's Center for Health Care Transformation. The statement notes Congressman Gingrich's support for the recently passed MassCare or "RomneyCare" plan in Massachusetts.
The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system. ... We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goal should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans.
In 2008, Congressman Gingrich spoke at the Alegent Health Clinic in Bellevue, Nebraska. In that speech, he stated that there was a growing class of people that made more than $75,000 a year who chose not to have insurance. He asserted that these people were making the calculated, irresponsible decision to forgo insurance with the belief that the general population would pay for their care in the event of an accident or illness. As a solution, Congressman Gingrich asserts that the government can either enforce a mandate to require people to purchase insurance, or force everyone to purchase a bond in an amount to be determined later. Buzzfeed and TheBlaze first reported the video.
On May 15, 2011, Congressman Gingrich appeared on Meet the Press and was asked about a 1993 appearance on that same show in which he advocated in favor of a system that consisted of a mandate for individuals to purchase insurance coupled with subsidies to poor people to purchase their own insurance. He then reasserts his support for a mandate or a bond requirement. In the 2011 appearance, Congressman Gingrich again asserts that there is a group of people making over $75,000 a year that are seeking to purchase a second house instead of buying insurance and that those people need to be forced to purchase insurance or a bond through a mandate.
GREGORY: Allright, let me ask you about another hot button issue in the Republican primary of course, and that's health care. Mitt Romney, having to defend that he was a proponent of universal health care in Massachusetts and specifically around this idea of an individual mandate, where you make Americans buy insurance if they don't have it.Now, I know that you've got big differences with what you call Obamacare, but back in 1993 on this program, this is what you said about the individual mandate, watch:GINGRICH in 1993: I am for people ... individuals, exactly like automobile insurance ... individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance and I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals on a sliding scale, a subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.GREGORY: What you advocate there is precisely what President Obama did with his health care legislation, is it not?GINGRICH: No, it's not precisely what he did. In the first place, Obama basically is trying to replace the entire insurance system, creating state exchanges, creating a Washington based model, creating a federal system.I believe that all of us, and this is going to be a big debate, all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care.GREGORY: You agree with Mitt Romney on this point?GINGRICH: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to help pay for health care, and that there are ways to do it that make most Libertarians happy. I've said consistently that you ought to have some requirement that you have health insurance or you post an bond, or in some way you indicate that you are going to be held accountable.GREGORY: But that is the individual mandate is it not?GINGRICH: It's a variation on it ... It's a system ...GREGORY: So you won't use that against Mitt Romney?GINGRICH: No, it's a system that allows people to have a range of choices which are designed by the economy. But I think that setting the precedent ... you know, there are an amazing number of people that think that they ought to be given health care and so a large number of the uninsured earn $75,000 or more a year, don't buy health insurance, because they want to buy a second house, a better care, or go on vacation.
That makes four examples of Speaker Gingrich supporting mandates coupled with subsidies. These are the vey things that any conservative should instantly and reflexively reject. Yet, the speaker endorsed them in 1993, 2006, 2008, and on May 15, 2011.
Fast forward a day. That's right, one day. On May 16, 2011 Speaker Gingrich's campaign put out a video titled "Newt: I oppose the Obamacare Mandate." It starts out stating that he he is completely opposed to the federal mandate and that it is unconstitutional.
To be fair, this wasn't the first time Speaker Gingrich opposed the ObamaCare mandate. In October of 2009, Speaker Gingrich wrote an article for Human Events calling for President Obama to veto the health care reform legislation if it makes it to his desk. One of the reasons he gives for that veto is that the mandate in the legislation would punish those that make less that $250,000 the most.
... But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that at least 71 percent of the individual mandate penalties in Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-MT) bill would be paid by Americans earning less than $250,000. In fact, the nonpartisan analysis found that, of the $2.8 billion in penalties the bill imposes on those who do not purchase health insurance, a full $2 billion will be paid by taxpayers earning less than $120,000 for a family of four.
In March of 2010, Speaker Gingrich wrote an article for Human Events in which he stated that the States would push back against the unconstitutional health care mandate.
The fight will continue in the states where 38 of them have filed or are planning to file legislation that rebukes Obamacare’s “individual mandate” that requires you to purchase insurance even if you would rather pay directly for medical care. In addition, Attorneys General from several states plan to file lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the healthcare bill’s individual mandate.
On November 21, 2011 Speaker Gingrich's campaign released a plan to address health care and other items as part of his Presidential run. Within that documentation was a paragragh discussing the dangers of mandates and subsidies, and how they inevitabley lead to higher costs and rationing.
The intractable problem with such individual and employer mandates is this:once you have a mandate, the government has to specify exactly what coverage must be included in insurance for it to qualify. This introduces political considerations into determining these minimum standards, guaranteeing that nothing desired by the special interests will be left out. And once the government mandates such expensive insurance, the government becomes responsible for its costs. It has to adopt expensive subsidies to help people pay for the expensive plans that it is requiring. The resulting cost to the taxpayer and strain on the budget leads the government to try and control healthcare costs by limiting healthcare services.The inevitable result is rationing by a nameless, faceless, unaccountable board of government bureaucrats. This is why individual and employer mandates are bad policy leading down the road to socialized medicine, whether the mandates are adopted at the federal level, or the state level.
On June 13, 2011 Congressman Gingrich participated in the New Hampshire GOP debate. Less than a month after supporting his plan for mandates, bonds, and subsidies on Meet the Press, Congressman Gingrich is asked if a mandate should be a disqualifier for a Republican nominee. He asserts that support for a mandate should indeed be a litmus test and anyone supporting it should be disqualified.
KING: ... you have a -- I'll let you -- Mr. Speaker, you have at times said, you know, maybe you do have a consider a mandate. You've been very open to the individual mandate. It has become, it seems, at least at the moment, a litmus test in this Republican primary. Should it be?GINGRICH: Yes, it should be. If you -- if you explore the mandate, which even the Heritage Foundation at one time looked at, the fact is, when you get into an mandate, it ultimately ends up with unconstitutional powers. It allows the government to define virtually everything. And if you can do it for health care, you can do it for everything in your life, and, therefore, we should not have a mandate.
By October of 2011, Congressman Gingrich was attacking Governor Romney on his MassCare plan. When Governor Romney notes that Speaker Gingrich himself supported mandates, Gingrich asserts that he only supported it in alliance with the Heritage Foundation and only as an alternative to HillaryCare.
COOPER: Speaker Gingrich, you've also been very critical of Mitt Romney's plan not only on Obamacare, but his plan to lower the capital gains tax only on those earning under $200,000.GINGRICH: I want to say on health for a minute -- OK, let's just focus. "The Boston Herald" today reported that the state of Massachusetts is fining a local small business $3,000 because their $750-a-month insurance plan is inadequate, according to the bureaucrats in Boston.Now, there's a fundamental difference between trying to solve the problems of this country from the top down and trying to create environments in which doctors and patients and families solve the problem from the bottom up.And candidly, Mitt, your plan ultimately, philosophically, it's not Obamacare, and that's not a fair charge. But your plan essentially is one more big government, bureaucratic, high-cost system, which candidly could not have been done by any other state because no other state had a Medicare program as lavish as yours, and no other state got as much money from the federal government under the Bush administration for this experiment. So there's a lot as big government behind Romneycare. Not as much as Obamacare, but a heck of a lot more than your campaign is admitting.(APPLAUSE)COOPER: Governor Romney, 30 seconds.ROMNEY: Actually, Newt, we got the idea of an individual mandate from you.GINGRICH: That's not true. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.ROMNEY: Yes, we got it from you, and you got it from the Heritage Foundation and from you.GINGRICH: Wait a second. What you just said is not true. You did not get that from me. You got it from the Heritage Foundation.ROMNEY: And you never supported them?GINGRICH: I agree with them, but I'm just saying, what you said to this audience just now plain wasn't true.(CROSSTALK)ROMNEY: OK. Let me ask, have you supported in the past an individual mandate?GINGRICH: I absolutely did with the Heritage Foundation against Hillarycare.ROMNEY: You did support an individual mandate?ROMNEY: Oh, OK. That's what I'm saying. We got the idea from you and the Heritage Foundation.GINGRICH: OK. A little broader.ROMNEY: OK.
So there we have it. Congressman Newt Gingrich proposed a plan that would require everyone to purchase insurance or a bond to pay for their health care. He demonized a class of people making more than $75,000 and choosing not to purchase insurance as those to blame for the need for the mandate. That same family would be making $150,000 a year as a couple and forced to buy insurance under Congressman Gingrich's plan, and yet he demonized ObamaCare because it punished those making less than $250,000 a year. He supported a mandate in May of 2011 and stated that it should be a disqualifier less than a month later. When asked about his support for than mandate in later dates, he skirted the issue and hid behind the Heritage Foundation and opposition to a health care plan proposed in 1992 even though he was still proposing it in 2011.
These ideas are not conservative. Mandates, bonds, and subsidies cannot exist in the same mindset with someone who claims that they seek to reduce government and restore personal responsibility. Congressman Gingrich was right, support for a mandate should indeed be a litmus test. In this case Speaker Gingrich fails that test.