Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, gave the inaugural "Health Policy Grand Rounds" lecture at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center yesterday. The series, a joint venture between the Rockefeller Center and DHMC, aims to bring presidential candidates to DHMC to discuss health care issues and health policy.
Eschewing the podium to stand in front of the room, Romney spoke to a full auditorium of doctors, hospital employees and a small number of undergraduates. He started by talking about highly debated national policy issues, including the ongoing war on terrorism, government spending, dependence on foreign oil and an education system he said was not up to par with international standards, before transitioning to the central theme of his talk: the health insurance policy he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Romney suggested ways to expand his policy to the rest of America.
Calling inadequate health insurance "a crisis in health care," Romney argued that the cost of health coverage "is making it more and more difficult for [employers] to compete globally and very difficult for them to maintain coverage for their employees."
"A number of people expressed concern that they were living without health coverage. And that wasn't right, because they were worried about getting the primary care they needed," he said.
Romney said that the plan he instituted in Massachusetts, after consulting experts from various professional fields, involved stripping many regulations that had been placed on insurance companies. The state government then set up a payment scale, where the very poor got free health insurance, and co-payment of premiums increased with an increase in income. Much of the money for the co-payments was pulled from budgets that before had gone to providing free hospital coverage for walk-in patients.
The state then began requiring people to have insurance, while supervising the insurance companies to make sure they did not charge excessive premiums.
According to Romney, Massachusetts' program has led to more than 100,000 people signing up for insurance. He also noted that the program had been adopted by other states, and improved upon within those states.
"My opinion is that some other state will get a lot better [at running the program] than we do, and they'll find ways to get everybody insured, without having to have the government take over healthcare," Romney said.
Romney also made a point of the fact that only two Massachusetts legislators, out of 200, voted against his insurance policy. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., was also at the signing ceremony.
"When Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy are celebrating the same act, it means that one of us hasn't read the bill," Romney joked.
It is Romney's perceived success in heavily Democratic Massachusetts that has made him an attractive candidate to many Republicans. This history of interaction with Democrats is seen by some as separating Romney from an increasingly crowded field of potential Republican presidential hopefuls.
While Romney has not officially announced his candidacy, he has formed an exploratory committee, the step hopefuls often take before officially declaring a candidacy. However, concerns have been raised about Romney's religion, as a practicing Mormon, and his conservative stance on social issues.
Romney rose to national prominence in 2002 after serving as CEO of the Winter Olympics in Salt Late City, Utah. Before that, Romney had served as CEO of the consulting firm Bain and Company, and founded Bain Capital, a private equity firm.
The speech was part of a brief tour of New Hampshire, during which Romney visited four different sites throughout the state. Romney did not mention whether he will return to Dartmouth to give a more student-oriented discussion.
