Politics Romney: ‘We Don’t Have People Who Die Because They Don’t Have Insurance’ 
 
 Mitt Romney doubled down on his suggestion that uninsured Americans can find the care they need in emergency rooms, telling The Dispatch that people will always receive the treatment they need, and do not die or suffer because they can not pay for care. He pointed to federal law that requires hospitals to admit emergency patients, repeating his advice that patients rely on the most expensive form of care reserved strictly for emergencies. Romney told the Columbus Dispatch: 
 
 “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal. “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance — although hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs. 
 
 Emergency rooms serve as a place of last resort, but 45,000 Americans still die every year because they lack health insurance, or one every 12 minutes. Uninsured adults under age 65 are also at a 40 percent higher death risk. Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care. 
 
 Romney’s health care proposal would leave 72 million Americans without health insurance and wouldn’t provide all uninsured Americans with a stable source of insurance. ||||| Mitt Romney appears to have altered his position on the Obamacare ban on denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch editorial board. 
 
 “You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance,” said Romney, according to the paper. 
 
 “But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says, ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance.” 
 
 In the same interview with the Dispatch, he also argued that not having insurance does not in itself lead to deaths. 
 
 “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’” Romney said. “Instead you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” 
 
 Tune in to ABCNews.com on Thursday for livestreaming coverage of the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate in Danville, Ky. Coverage kicks off with ABC News’ live preview show at noon, and full debate coverage begins at 8 p.m. 
 
 Romney’s reference to a “choice” with regard to pre-existing conditions and his inclusion of giving opportunity to people “who are currently uninsured” would seem to contradict earlier statements from Romney and his own website, which suggest no ban on pre-existing conditions should be extended for people who don’t currently have insurance. A full transcript of the interview has not yet been posted by the Dispatch. The Romney campaign has not responded to a request for comment. 
 
 Read more about Romney and pre-existing conditions. 
 
 There were approximately 49 million non-elderly uninsured Americans in 2010, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report that utilized U.S. Census data. More than 70 percent of those have gone without insurance for a year or more, according to the report. 
 
 Here’s what it says on Mitt Romney’s website about pre-existing conditions: “Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage.” 
 
 That has been taken to suggest that he favors a ban on insurance companies discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions, but not for people who are currently uninsured. “Continuous coverage” generally means three months, so presumably a three-month gap is allowed. 
 
 Romney has backed this assessment up, most notably in an interview during the GOP primary this spring with Jay Leno, when Romney was careful to stipulate that someone would need to have had insurance. “People who have done their best to be insured are going to be covered,” said Romney. 
 
 “If they are 45 years old, and they show up and say, ‘I want insurance because I have heart disease,’ it’s like, ‘Hey, guys. We can’t play the game like that,’” Romney told Jay Leno during a March appearance on the “Tonight Show.” ”You’ve got to get insurance when you are well, and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered. 
 
 “People who have been continuously insured, let’s say someone’s had a job for a while and been insured, then they get real sick and they happen to lose a job, or change jobs, they find, ‘Gosh, I got a pre-existing condition. I can’t get insured,’ I’d say no, no, no. People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance,” he said. 
 
 In the presidential debate last week, Romney said, “I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions,” but he did not elaborate. ||||| L 
 
 iberal critics of Mitt Romney's plan to repeal ObamaCare argue that a President Romney would leave tens of millions of Americans without health insurance they would otherwise have under Obama's reform law. In a meeting with the Columbus Dispatch editorial board this week, Romney sought to downplay the harm that such an insurance-revoking plan would cause. "We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance," Romney said, repeating a claim he made last month on 60 Minutes. Is Romney right, or is he underestimating the dangers faced by the nation's tens of millions of uninsured Americans? Here, a brief guide: 
 
 
 
 First off: What exactly did Romney say? 
 
 He told the newspaper's editors that even those without health-insurance coverage have a safety net, because federal law prohibits hospitals from turning even uninsured people away when they show up to an emergency room. "We don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance, we just say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack,'" Romney said. "No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital." 
 
 
 
 Is Romney right? 
 
 About the law, yes, he is, says Rebecca Leber at Think Progress. Emergency rooms really do serve as "a place of last resort" for the uninsured. Still, an analysis released in 2009 by Harvard Medical School researchers found that 45,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance. That's one person every 12 minutes. Other studies have put the figure lower — the Institute of Medicine estimated in 2002 that about 18,000 people die annually because they're uninsured. Indeed, the consensus among researchers is that you run a greater risk of dying if you're not insured. 
 
 
 
 Why do uninsured Americans die if hospitals must admit them? 
 
 Hospitals have to treat them in the emergency room, but many patients don't get there until it's too late. And patients with chronic conditions often can't afford care they need on a regular basis — basic services that emergency rooms aren't set up to provide. "For any doctor," Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the 2009 study, told Reuters, "it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent." 
 
 
 
 Why is Romney talking about this at all? 
 
 He's stuck with "defending his emergency-room plan as a tenable solution," says Steve Benen at MSNBC, because he knows full well his proposal to gut ObamaCare will strand tens of millions of Americans with no coverage. "The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage," and forcing hospitals and taxpayers to foot the bill for free emergency room care is "the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised." But Romney isn't talking about returning to the pre-ObamaCare status quo, says John Hinderaker at Power Line. He wants to help get more people covered by doing things like "banning discrimination" against people with pre-existing conditions. So disagree with him if you must, but don't distort his plans. 
 
 
 
 Sources: Columbus Dispatch, MSNBC, PowerLine, Reuters, Think Progress 
 
 Read more political coverage at The Week's 2012 Election Center. ||||| Romney defends plan to repeal Obama healthcare law 
 
 By Elise Viebeck - 
 
 Repealing President Obama’s healthcare law would not keep people from getting insurance or quality care, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday. 
 
 In an interview with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch, Romney defended his plans to repeal the healthcare law, saying the uninsured could still visit an emergency room and that people with preexisting conditions could keep their insurance. 
 
 “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” Romney said. 
 
 “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital,” he said. 
 
 “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance,” Romney added. 
 
 The comment drew criticism from the Obama campaign, which said it showed Romney did not understand the struggles of middle-class families that lack insurance. 
 
 “If he did, he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage,” said Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. 
 
 Healthcare is a challenging issue for Romney, who backed an overhaul of the healthcare laws in Massachusetts as that state's governor that President Obama has said served as a basis for his own federal healthcare law. 
 
 Romney embraces the Massachusetts law, but argues that different states should be free to set up their own healthcare laws. He has described "ObamaCare" as a federal takeover of state healthcare law. 
 
 In the interview in Columbus, Romney also said he would ensure people with preexisting conditions could not be blocked from getting health insurance as long as they previously had health insurance. But he suggested insurance companies would not be obliged to cover people with preexisting conditions who had never had been insured. 
 
 “You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance," Romney told the Columbus newspaper. 
 
 "But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance." 
 
 The comments come as Romney has sought to edge toward the political center with some of his remarks. After an impressive debate performance last week, polls have shown Romney edging into a lead over Obama, and the two men are intensely fighting over centrist, Independent voters. 
 
 Obama's healthcare law remains unpopular in polls, and conservatives argue it will raise taxes and limit growth while adding to the deficit. 
 
 Obama and the law's supporters argue it will lower government spending and national healthcare costs, in part by requiring younger, healthier people to purchase insurance. 
 
 Federal law requires that virtually every U.S. hospital treat anyone who arrives needing emergency care, a guarantee passed in 1986 as part of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). 
 
 The law was designed to prevent the situation Romney described on Wednesday — uninsured Americans dying in their homes for lack of care — but it also creates a “free-rider” problem by burdening hospitals with costs they pass to other patients. 
 
 Smith cited a report by the liberal advocacy group Families USA, which supports the healthcare law, that found 26,000 Americans die every year because of a lack of health coverage. 
 
 In 2009, nonpartisan researchers at Harvard Medical School pegged the number of U.S. deaths related to lack of coverage closer to 45,000 annually. 
 
 This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. ||||| WASHINGTON -- Downplaying the need for the government to ensure that every person has health insurance, Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured. 
 
 "Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care." 
 
 This constitutes a dramatic reversal in position for Romney, who passed a universal health care law in Massachusetts, in part, to eliminate the costs incurred when the uninsured show up in emergency rooms for care. Indeed, in both his book and in high-profile interviews during the campaign, Romney has touted his achievement in stamping out these inefficiencies while arguing that the same thing should be done at the national level. 
 
 And while Romney refused to agree on Sunday that the government's role is to ensure that every American has health care, he has endorsed such an idea in the past. 
 
 When asked in a March 2010 interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" whether he believes in universal coverage, Romney said, "Oh, sure." 
 
 "Look, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility, particularly if they are people who have sufficient means to pay their own way," he said. 
 
 Watch Romney on "Morning Joe" in 2010: 
 
 And in a 2007 interview with Glenn Beck, Romney called the fact that people without insurance were able to get "free care" in emergency rooms "a form of socialism." 
 
 "When they show up at the hospital, they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that's not a form of socialism, I don't know what is," he said at the time. "So my plan did something quite different. It said, you know what? If people can afford to buy insurance ... or if they can pay their own way, then they either buy that insurance or pay their own way, but they no longer look to government to hand out free care. And that, in my opinion, is ultimate conservativism." 
 
 Getting rid of high numbers of inefficient emergency room visits was actually a key goal of Romney's health care reform in Massachusetts, as he noted in his book "No Apology": 
 
 After about a year of looking at data -- and not making much progress -- we had a collective epiphany of sorts, an obvious one, as important observations often are: the people in Massachusetts who didn't have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care. Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. And our state's hospitals were offering even more assistance than the federal government required. That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn't have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did -- before acute conditions developed -- the cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared. 
 
 In the "60 Minutes" interview, Romney stressed that each state should address the problem of the uninsured through different means. But he didn't speak with the same alarm about the cost of emergency room care. 
 
 "Again, different states have different ways of doing that," Romney responded. "Some provide that care through clinics. Some provide the care through emergency rooms. In my state, we found a solution that worked for my state. But I wouldn't take what we did in Massachusetts and say to Texas, 'You've got to take the Massachusetts model.'" 
 
 Romney's efforts to limit emergency room care in Massachusetts were largely successful. 
 
 Six years after he signed health reform into law, visits to emergency rooms in Massachusetts are decreasing and the state has the highest rate of residents with health insurance. ||||| Mitt Romney on Thursday blasted the Supreme Court decision upholding the landmark health care legislation enacted by the man he wants to beat in November, President Barack Obama. 
 
 Delivering brief comments but taking no questions, Romney made the case that his candidacy is the only way to ensure repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which he labeled early in his remarks a “tax” that will hurt the economy. 
 
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 “As you might imagine I disagree with the Supreme Court decision, and I agree with the dissent,” the presumptive GOP presidential candidate said. “Obamacare was bad policy yesterday, it’s bad policy today.” 
 
 Signaling a slight shift in the way he talks about the law, Romney called for “replacing” the law instead of just repealing it. 
 
 “If we want to replace Obamacare, we have to replace Obama,” he said. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Obama praises SCOTUS ruling) 
 
 Romney’s campaign reported raising $375,000 online in the 2½ hours after the announcement. And Andrea Saul, the press secretary, tweeted that the campaign and Victory PAC, which allows for larger donations, had raised a total of $200,000 in roughly the same time period. 
 
 In Washington, D.C., for the decision, Romney outlined a number of elements in the law that he thinks should remain intact, like requiring the coverage of people with pre-existing conditions and allowing people to keep the insurance they currently hold. 
 
 “We’ve got to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions know they will be insured,” he said. 
 
 Romney added that his reforms would lower the cost of health insurance, saying that is something the health care law doesn’t do. 
 
 Repeal of the health care law was a central element of Romney’s stump speech even before the Supreme Court decision and regularly garners the presidential nominee the most applause on the campaign trail. 
 
 Romney is now likely to step up that line of attack as he campaigns toward November, with hashtags of #Fullrepeal breaking out among Republicans on Twitter in the wake of the decision. 
 
 Romney, who was in Washington for a fundraiser on Wednesday night, watched the decision get handed down from his hotel room at the Washington Hilton. 
 
 The campaign tried to keep secret the location of Romney’s response to the court ruling until the last minute, officially alerting the press less than an hour before his remarks. 
 
 The setup, which included a “repeal and replace” sign on the podium, was designed to serve as a televised event with no questions from the assembled press. Cameras were placed directly in front of the GOP standard-bearer with the U.S. Capitol behind him, while reporters were relegated to the sidelines, unable to look directly at Romney. 
 
 As he arrived at the event location, Romney was joined by Deputy Campaign Manager Katie Packer Gage, Policy Director Lanhee Chen and Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens.
– A comment from Mitt Romney on health insurance is making waves, especially among critics on the left. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch editorial board (in all-important Ohio), Romney sought to convey the notion that sick people wouldn't be left high and dry with the repeal of ObamaCare. His quote: “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack. No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government, or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” It's that last part getting the most attention: White House: If Romney understood middle-class struggles, "he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage." See the Hill for more on that. ThinkProgress: Emergency rooms don't cut it as a last resort. "Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care," writes Rebecca Leber. She cites a study putting the yearly death toll as a result at 45,000. The Note blog at ABC News thinks Romney might have actually shifted his position on pre-existing conditions in the interview, and The Week has more background and context on Romney's statements.