Squashed

Terrible ideas Romney likes: "Selling insurance across state lines"

Back in 2010 Ezra Klein explained why this is a terrible idea.

[Conservatives] want insurers to be able to cluster in one state, follow that state’s regulations and sell the product to everyone in the country. In practice, that means we will have a single national insurance standard. But that standard will be decided by South Dakota. Or, if South Dakota doesn’t give the insurers the freedom they want, it’ll be decided by Wyoming. Or whoever.

This is exactly what happened in the credit card industry, which is regulated in accordance with conservative wishes. In 1980, Bill Janklow, the governor of South Dakota, made a deal with Citibank: If Citibank would move its credit card business to South Dakota, the governor would literally let Citibank write South Dakota’s credit card regulations.

If one state or another were to decide that it would be best served by dropping all its insurance regulations and letting its citizens purchase a plan from any other state in the country. Of course, no state wants to do that. So the industry has pushed the Republicans to do this on a federal level where every state is stuck with the most industry friendly rule, whether it wants to be or not.

Romney has, of course, embraced it like he has embraced every other corporate give away.

(Also Romney wants to eliminate the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare and turn Medicaid into a block grant. This will likely result in the death of roughly 100,000 people per year¹. But since those 100,000 people probably aren’t paying income taxes, Romney’s apparently not worried.)