Mitt Romney claimed this past week on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he wanted to make sure that national health insurance would cover people with pre-existing conditions.
Shortly thereafter, his own campaign amended his statement: Romney has not changed his stance or plan for the way insurance companies should deal with people who have pre-existing conditions.
In the words of Barack Obama: getting fact checked by your own campaign?
That’s rough.
The reason I’m so inclined to get sassy about this particular topic is because this is a seriously important issue that has the potential to affect millions of Americans if Romney is elected and Romneycare replaces Obamacare.
We need to think long and hard about our vote.
The term “pre-existing condition” can apply to a variety of situations and afflictions that require medical attention ranging from asthma to pregnancy and from obesity to cancer.
Obamacare requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions indiscriminately.
Romneycare requires insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions as long as they have already had previous coverage and it also allows insurance companies to limit coverage of certain more extreme conditions to only six months. This policy could leave millions uninsured for reasons ranging from prior gaps in coverage to an illness they cannot control and did not choose to have.
According to an article by the Associated Press, the worst havoc this policy could wreak would be to leave 49 million Americans without health insurance.
From what I understand, Romney’s ideas about health care coverage can be summed up with a shrug and a “Well you should have thought of that earlier, buddy,” attitude in regards to the uninsured and ill.
The glaring moral flaw with that idea is that not everybody can afford or get health insurance and nobody lives their lives planning on developing a debilitating illness.
I understand that insurance companies exist to make money and I understand that this is a sensitive topic for a lot of people. But I think that health care is an issue that we need to approach with a bit more compassion.
In a wealthy, developed country, it just doesn’t make moral sense that a person should have to worry about whether or not they have the financial ability to recover from an illness.
It wouldn’t be right to allow a person to lose their life savings because they suffered an accident or had a physical disability. There are a lot of reasons why people may have gaps in their insurance coverage.
Whether or not these reasons are good or bad, nobody deserves to learn the hard way that they should have found a way to get better health insurance.
The well-being of millions of Americans isn’t something we should be taking lightly. Health care is one of the most important issues to consider in the 2012 election. Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan is not a bad one, but it is vital to not neglect the care and attention that people with pre-existing conditions deserve.
Given the gravity of the situation and the sheer amount of Americans this has the potential to affect, it is absolutely something that a man who has a serious shot at being the next
The President of the United States should not be lying about on his campaign trail.
It’s wrong to deny people the right to health, and it’s even more wrong to pretend that you plan to do otherwise.
Sarah Moesta is a junior majoring in English and is the Daily Collegian’s Friday columnist. Email her at smm5793@psu.edu
