Obamacare Explained in 7 Easy Steps By Its Original Creator, Mitt Romney

As governor, Mitt Romney pioneered the main elements of the Obamacare in his state. The federal government funded the Romneycare experiment with the hopes of nationalizing the program if successful. Ninety-eight percent of the population in Massachusetts is now covered under Romneycare.

Most people like how the health care system works in his state. This is a huge success: Massachusetts achieves far more universal coverage than any other state, and people are now healthier. The Affordable Care Act builds on that success. Key elements of Romneycare were copied and perfected in the Affordable Care Act.

When Romney passed the law he faced all the same attacks the current law does: "Employers will drop coverage," "Costs will skyrocket!" 

Most of these worries never occurred. Also, parts of the program that did not work were removed prior to nationalization.

Romney ran his first presidential election on nationalizing his plan, which is pretty much identical to what the GOP now derides in Obama's health care law. In his second election, he ran against everything he fought for during the first election in a complete flip flop. 

Still, nobody explains the elements that now make up the Affordable Care Act better than Mitt Romney:

1. Romney Explains How the Individual Mandate Reduces Socialism

Your family and your employer are currently socializing the losses from unpaid bills left behind by the uninsured. The Affordable Care Act ends this. Read about this here. 

2. Romney Pitches Nationalizing the Individual Mandate and Explains How It Lowers Costs in a Market-Friendly way

Romney explains that we are already spending all the money of giving out free care and why it is important to turn the money towards getting people to buy their own insurance.

3. Romney Explains Why the Individual Mandate is Essential to People Getting the Coverage That They Need

This video is from a press conference that occurred as Romney pioneered the individual mandate and pushed it through both houses of the Massachusetts legislature.

4. Romney Praises President Obama For Copying the Insurance Exchange System

Romney explains that you don't set up a government insurance plan, as it will cost too much. Well, President Obama never did. Every plan in the insurance exchanges is a private insurance plan; there is no government option. There is one exception to this.

Under Obamacare, every state may use their own plan to reach universal coverage and lowers costs. If they submit a plan, the federal government will fund it. No state was required to use the Affordable Care Act to achieve this goal. 14 states took unique approaches. Vermont chose a single-payer system that everyone in the state will enter.

Vermont will have the only government-run health care system. All other states utilize private insurance.

5. Romney Explains How the Government Saves Money By Subsidizing Insurance Purchases

In Romney's state, they spent $1 billion a year paying the bills of the uninsured. Their calculations showed it would cost only $640 million to subsidize all of those people to have full insurance. The Affordable Care Act copies this approach. 

A 2010 national study on the Cost of Uncompensated Care estimated that without the Affordable Care Act from 2014 and 2019 federal government would spend between $560 and $700 billion dollars on unpaid medical bills. With the Affordable Care Act, the federal government only spends $240 to $330 billion on uncompensated care.

6. Pollsters Lied to Romney and Convinced Him to Flip-Flop On His Signature Accomplishment

During the elections, Rasmussen polling was releasing new polls every day saying just how unpopular the Affordable Care Act was. In other words, Rasmussen polling and Republicans have been pushing the idea that the law is unpopular, in order to make it more unpopular, and in order to have a wedge to attempt to get more votes. 

But when another poll came out, the results were usually sharply different than Rasmussen results. For example, when Quinnipiac polls showed that 6% more people favored repeal, Rasmussen showed that 12% more people favored repeal. Coincidence?

Mitt Romney followed the skewed polls (Fox News uses Rasmussen) and believed the public would support him by a wide margin if he called for repeal. This was a mistake.

Bottom Line: Fox News and Rasmussen Polling, along with the Republican Party, were trying to manipulate you. Romney followed the manipulated data, then fought against everything he believed in and ultimately lost the election because the data was not real.

7. Mitt Romney Pioneered and Sold the Nationalization Of the Individual Mandate

So there it is. Governor Romney spent quite a bit of time promoting the conservative Heritage Foundation's individual mandate nationally, and now it is law. Romney was the first to sign the individual mandate into law in his state and now we'll all be required to have insurance.

Hopefully, you've been helped by his clear explanations of why it is crucial to lowering costs.

It worked in Massachusetts. 98% of all people were covered. President Obama then hired Jonathon Gruber, the architect of Romneycare, to write and perfect Obamacare.

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