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The debate spin room is the place where advisers are supposed to convince reporters that their guy won. It's not the place where advisers are supposed to make news. But it sounds like Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, did exactly that night. And it's wouldn’t be the kind of news that makes his candidate look good, although it remains to be seen how many people will notice.
It happened while Fehrnstrom was answering questions about health care. During the debate, Romney repeated a claim he’s made many times: That his health care plan would provide protection for people with pre-existing conditions. As noted here and elsewhere, that claim is false. Romney has suggested he’d prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions if they already have insurance coverage. That wouldn’t protect the many people who’ve let insurance lapse (say, because of a job loss) or couldn’t get it in the first place. It also wouldn’t guarantee that people could pay for the insurance, either by providing financial assistance or regulating prices. In short, it wouldn’t do much more than the current law does, which isn’t very much.
Apparently several reporters asked Fehrnstrom about it, among them Evan McMorris-Santoro from Talking Points Memo:
Pressed by TPM’s Evan McMorris-Santoro, Fehrnstrom said those who currently lack coverage because they have pre-existing conditions would need their states to implement their own laws—like Romney’s own Massachusetts health care law—that ban insurance company from discriminating against sick people.
“We’d like to see states do what Massachusetts did,” Fehrnstrom said. “In Massachusetts we have a ban on pre-existing conditions.”
This is an admission that Romney’s statement in the debate was wrong. If his plan truly protected people with pre-existing conditions, as Romney says, it wouldn’t require states to do so on their own.
The irony is that Romney’s coverage plan in Massachusetts protects people with pre-existing conditions the very same way that the Affordable Care Act will: By prohibiting insurers from denying coverage or raising premiums to anybody because of medical status, then providing subsidies for people who can’t buy coverage on their own. That would be the same Affordable Care Act that Romney keeps promising to repeal, because it'd do so many awful things to American health care.
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6 comments
He was wrong about a lot of stuff including the tax deduction for sending jobs overseas. This was the worst thing I have seen at any Presidential debate, there were so many lies delivered with high energy and great conviction.
- Sophia
October 4, 2012 at 11:59am
It's like the Ryan convention speech. They lie excessively and when the press calls them out on it, they talk about the biased press -- never addressing the underlying facts.
- Nusholtz
October 4, 2012 at 12:14pm
By now the Obama campaign and the other national Democratic campaigns should have sent an email to the millions on their email lists clearly listing all of Romney's lies and evasions and flip flops in last night's debate. By "clearly" I mean simple lists in the most straightforward language. That email -- and follow ups -- would provide information and arguments we could pass on to friends and neighbors. Instead, so far I have received three requests for more money -- with absolutely no substance except to call Romney a liar without offering any evidence that he is. If 3 or 4 million people receive four or five emails over the next week about Romney' lies, evasions, and flip flops, and the message is forwarded and repeated in conversations and picked up for letters to the editor and blogs, a dent might be made in Romney's comeback (which surely is taking place). At this point, more money will not be what saves the Obama campaign. What will save it is a more forceful expression of its message
- PeteBeck
October 4, 2012 at 12:26pm
Hear, hear, PeteBeck.
- roidubouloi
October 4, 2012 at 12:32pm
Let us hope that Romney's fibs, delivered "with high energy and great conviction" from that stage in Denver last night, may be examined in detail over the next few days by those who have the attention of the public. Fact-checkers to the fore, please.
- Haole45
October 4, 2012 at 2:27pm
Obama didn't look presidential Wednesday night, but neither did his opponent. Romney looked like a bullying, sociopathic dictator, lying almost every time he opened his blithering mouth. He even bullied the moderator. Obama easily won the talking points, but Romney won on what counts most to empty-headed Republicans, appearance without substance. What the hell does Romney stand for? He was for everybody and against nobody, except Obama, last night. He makes Kerry, who took a hit in 2004 as a flip-flopper, look like Iron Man. Democrats will make a critical mistake, if they don't blitz the media with flip-flopper ads about Romney. Obama may have started that campaign in Denver Thursday, mentioning Romney's 180-degree about-face Wednesday night on a number of issues. I call Romney a chameleon. In less polite circles he would be called a whore.
- magboy47.
October 4, 2012 at 2:33pm