Romney's Health Care Retreat

Health care is one of those incredibly tedious and important issues where I'm agnostic. I don't have passionate views on whether single-payer is better than the mess we have now. I tend to be skeptical of the right's claim that health savings accounts and some tax juggling is going to fix the problem. The current system seems to me to be the worst amalgam of private profit and socialized risk--and that's for the people lucky enough to be in the system. So I confess to being disappointed in Mitt Romney's health care proposals that came out today. They seem flat and like so much more Republican pablum about the market. (For the record, I'm just as skeptical of the Obama, Edwards and still-evolving Clinton health care plans too.) Since we're dealing with north of a trillion dollars it's hard to imagine any one fix that solves sthe problem. Still the Massachusetts plan that Romney enacted, while not perfect, struck me as the boldest step in a long time so it pains me to see him distance himself from it. I suppose the plan's government mandates--everyone has to buy health insurance is the basic point--doesn't play well in the GOP primaries. And maybe Romney has a point that the Massachusetts experience can't be repeated nationally. Still what he came up with today--less regulation, more tax cuts, blah, blah, blah--feels less like a plan and more like a gesture. Is this really worthy of the man from Bain?