Roadkill

I read a fascinating book last year called The Black Swan. It was written by a mathematics professor at the University of Massachusetts, and is about unintended consequences and predictability theory.

With the recent passage of the health care legislation, one storyline has been sadly overlooked, the complete and total elimination of Mitt Romney as a Presidential candidate in 2012.

With health care reform, Republicans found their wedge issue with which to power their 2010 midterm, and presumably, their 2012 campaigns. This makes sense politically, health care is a severely complicated issue. Last year I listened to a fascinating two hour debate between two prominent health care policy economists. One was liberal, the other conservative. The first hour of the debate was basically them agreeing with each other about how many problems the American health care system has. The sticking point was which interest groups would take a bath in any inevitable reform.

As Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney signed into law state-wide healthcare reform, which substantively is very, very similar to the law just passed by Congress. To quote one piece:

The federal bill and the Massachusetts bill have much in common. Both establish exchanges, both have an individual mandate (which Republicans detest), both provide significant subsidies to the poor to purchase health insurance. They differ in one significant respect, however- the Massachusetts bill does not contain a fraction of the cost controls contained in the federal bill. That means not only did Romney support the “entitlement” aspect of federal reform at a state level, he didn’t do enough to address rising costs for his state.

Poor Mittens.