MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Romney speaks on health care, faces attacks from right and left. Mitt Romney, who looks to be in preparation for a 2012 presidential run on the Republican ticket, is giving a highly anticipated speech on health care today in an attempt to fend off critics of the health reforms he signed into law while governor of Massachusetts in 2006.
Romney, who will speak in his home state of Michigan, has been the target of attacks from both the right and left for his landmark health law, which requires all Mass. residents to have health insurance.
An extensive editorial in The Wall Street Journal chastises Romney for the universal coverage that the law enacted, which was designed to pay for itself based on the belief that health care funding would be reallocated toward insurance premiums and away from free coverage in emergency rooms. The WSJ column, titled "Obama’s Running Mate," asserts that the law has been a failure and it yet set the precedent for the Obama administration’s health reforms.
Meanwhile, Democrats are portraying Romney as "a political chameleon willing to shift positions to build support," writes The Hill. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) created mock slides for the PowerPoint presentation Romney is expected to deliver as part of his speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The slides count numerous times throughout Romney’s career, as recently as 2008, when he expressed support for healthcare plans containing an individual mandate, the publication reported.
Romney’s speech will confront the presidential hopeful’s ghosts — “something he hasn’t come close to doing yet,” Politico writes. The publication outlined what the prospective candidate needs to say to differentiate and distance himself from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Study: U.S. ranks last in health, first in spending. A new report from the The Conference Board of Canada reinforces statistics that health care reform supporters have been trumpeting for years: The U.S. spends more than any other industrialized country on health care but has one of the most unhealthy populations, reports The Hill.
Obama’s ACO plan met with major protest. President Obama’s main idea for getting quality medical care at less cost met more resistance yesterday after key health care providers called his administration’s initial blueprint for so-called Accountable Care Organizations so complex it’s unworkable. The American Medical Group Association, an umbrella group representing premier organizations such as the Mayo Clinic, wrote the administration saying that more than 90 percent of its members would not participate, because the rules as written are so onerous it would be nearly impossible for them to succeed, writes The Associated Press.
Vermont’s universal health plan nears law, but big hurdles remain. The bill for Vermont’s universal health plan calls for creation of a new five-member state panel to provide answers on whether the Green Mountain State’s publicly funded program can work. Some of the questions that remain about the plan are how the it will be paid for and what health services it will cover. Also uncertain is whether Vermont will be able to get permission to use federal health care dollars to help establish its new system, writes The Associated Press.
Leg-reversal surgery gets little league pitcher back on the mound. An Ohio boy is playing baseball again after part of his leg was rotated in a bone cancer operation. In a rare surgical procedure called a Van Ness rotation-plasty, doctors at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus removed the boy’s right knee and part of the thigh, rotated the bottom half 180 degrees, moved it up and reconnected his blood vessels, writes UPI.