During the third debate, Romney stated, "Come on our website, you'll look how we get to a balanced budget within eight to 10 years. We do it by getting -- by reducing spending in a whole series of programs. By the way, number one -- get rid of Obamacare". As with much of what Romney says or advocates that fact-checkers find to be false, untrue, deceptive or misleading, eliminating Obamacare will not reduce the budget. As scored by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, repealing the president's health plan will increase the budget by $109 billion over the next ten years.
For uncommitted voters, or those who think they have decided but who have yet to vote, consider this: Obamacare was enacted to stem the tide of millions of Americans from being able to access or afford health care. Without the means to maintain our health, none of us have anything at all -- we cannot enjoy our freedoms, our work, our community and certainly our families and loved ones. But Willard Mitt Romney wants to take away from us the ability to enjoy what the Declaration of Independence provides for us -- life, liberty and pursuit of happiness -- by telling us, falsely, that he wants to get rid of Obamacare right after he becomes president, and get rid of it because it only adds to a deficit that requires reduction. Of course, at the same time, particularly during the third debate on foreign policy, he wants to add to the budget $2 trillion in defense spending that the military industrial complex says it does not need.
More incredulous is that the former Massachusetts' governor tells us that the health plan he created for the citizens of Massachusetts, "Romneycare" (upon which Obamacare is principally based, including the individual mandate) is not workable on the federal level, as each state should decide how its citizens should be able to afford and access their health. Romney fails to tell the American public that Romneycare was supported by nearly $400 million in federal monies to insure the uninsured for his program.
Further, he tells us that he has a health plan to replace Obamacare that will provide coverage for pre-existing conditions. Yet moments after he said this, one of his senior advisers had to say that pre-existing conditions would be covered only if the insured had continuous coverage that provided for it. In other words, if you lost your insurance for any reason, the new Romney plan would not cover your pre-existing conditions.
The debates for 2012 are now history with 14 days left before we elect our next president. Health care and our ability to afford and access any health care system has been a critical issue in the campaign. Indeed, Obamacare already provides benefits and more are on the way starting in 2014. At the end of the day, however, do we all want someone in the Oval Office who does not tell us the truth about the new health care program which is already the law of the land and who simply wants to get rid of it on false pretenses, or do we want to have a leader who had the courage and tenacity to move forward on establishing a health law, the first in many, many decades, and then who ensured its passage that has become a genuine start to ensuring all Americans have a right to health care -- and the ability to access and afford what it takes to remain healthy?
The person we want in the White House is the one who will not sacrifice our health to get there. The answer for who that person should be could not be any clearer now.