Romney Revolution

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Comment by Evelio Perez on November 10, 2009 at 10:14am

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Comment by Evelio Perez on November 5, 2009 at 12:41am

Comment by Evelio Perez on October 19, 2009 at 7:55pm

Press room
RELEASE: Governor Romney's address to AIPAC 2009
San Diego, Calif -- Governor Mitt Romney today delivered a speech to the AIPAC National Summit on America's relationship with Israel and its other allies. Following are excerpts from the speech:


On America’s recent drift from Israel:

"In pursuit of a peace process, the United States today has exerted substantial pressure on Israel while putting almost no pressure on the Palestinians and the Arab world.

Consider how little we ask of the Arab world. Why is it that only Egypt and Jordan have peace agreements with Israel? What about Saudi Arabia? The Saudi government will not even sit in the same room as the Israelis, let alone normalize relations or work towards a realistic peace agreement. In 2007, at the height of the Olmert-Abbas peace track, the Saudis were demanding that more U.S. companies comply with their boycott of Israel.

Israel, on the other hand, has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to a lasting and realistic peace. As you know well, in 2005, for example, Israel handed over the Gaza strip to the Palestinians. This generous, unilateral act was met in return with rockets fired into Israel, with a coup by Hamas in Gaza, and with two wars – one on the Lebanese border and another in Gaza.

Inexplicably, the United States now places the burden on Israel to make still more unilateral concessions.”

On the United Nations:

“I will happily agree that the UN has done some good in its history. But I will also insist that it has also done terrible damage to the causes it claims to uphold. And on no issue has it been more irresponsible and morally reckless than when considering the fate of Israel.

Time and time again, the UN has become a forum for invective against the Jewish state. We saw it in 1975, when the UN passed an anti-Semitic resolution that condemned Israel as racist. And we have seen it in just the last few weeks, when the UN gave a platform to a Holocaust-denier who has pledged over and over again that he will wipe out Israel. It was a grotesque moment and another stain on the reputation of the United Nations. And congratulations to Prime Minister Netanyahu for having the moral courage to say what needed to be said to those members of the United Nations who stayed to listen to Mahmoud Achmadinejad—”Have you no shame!”


On our relationship with global allies:

“When we treat any ally in a desultory manner – and especially if we act in a way that causes them to question our reliability, our resolve, our commitment and staying power – then they as well as our other allies, all of whom are watching very closely, will turn to others for their security.
When Poland and the Czech Republic are humiliated by us, they lose confidence in America’s support for them, and they may decide that they must incline more toward Russia.
If our friends in Latin America like Colombia become convinced that we are turning our back on them, they may feel compelled to become more accommodative to Hugo Chavez.
If Japan believes the United States is weakening its commitment in the Pacific, it may distance itself from America and draw closer to China.
When defenders of democracy and the rule of constitution and law in Honduras find that we have sided with their pro-Chavez illegal opposition, freedom fighters across the world, re-calculate their chances for success.
And if Arab nations believe that we will accommodate Iran’s ambition to dominate the Middle East with nuclear weapons, they will move closer to that very nation.
Whenever or wherever America steps away from one of its friends and allies, or shrinks in the face of belligerent tyrants, those who are allied with us may understandably or inevitably step closer to our foes. The advance of human rights and the defense of liberty demand that America stands firm with its allies—all of them.”

On Iran:

“At this late stage I would simply say that it is long past time for America to recognize the nature of the regime we are dealing with. The Iranian regime is unalloyed evil, run by people who are at once ruthless and fanatical. Stop thinking that a charm offensive will talk the Iranians out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It will not. And agreements, unenforceable and unverifiable, will have no greater impact here than they did in North Korea. Once an outstretched hand is met with a clenched fist, it becomes a symbol of weakness and impotence. President Eisenhower said it well: “the care of freedom is not long entrusted to the weak and timid.”

Comment by Evelio Perez on October 6, 2009 at 10:02pm

Comment by Evelio Perez on October 6, 2009 at 6:49pm

This By Mitt Romney | NEWSWEEK
Published May 2, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 18, 2009

I hear loud and clear from people in my state, and from across the country, what they want to see in health care. They want it to cost less, have the highest quality and see that it extends to all Americans—even when they lose their job or when they're sick. Republicans agree. So do Democrats. Where we disagree is how to get the job done.
Our divide is fundamental: Republicans believe health care can be best guided by consumers, physicians and markets; Democrats believe government would do better. Some Democrats would have government buy health care for us; set the rates for doctors, hospitals and medicines; and decide what medical treatment we would be entitled to receive for each illness. If you liked the HMOs of the '80s, you'd love government-run health care.
Democrats have been winning. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicaid bill, he estimated it would cost $500 million. Today, it costs $500 billion. Politicians have expanded government coverage to more and more people. They propose that we adopt European-style, government-financed health care. But, in some respects, they've already gotten us there: the government now spends more per citizen on health care than do the governments of France, Germany, the United Kingdom or Sweden.
But government can't match consumers and markets when it comes to lowering cost, improving quality and boosting productivity. Compare the U.S. Postal Service with UPS and Federal Express. Stack North Korea against South Korea.
The right answer for health care is to apply more market force, not less. Here's how:
1. Get everyone insured. Help low-income households retain or purchase private insurance with a tax credit, voucher or coinsurance. Use the tens of billions we now give hospitals for free care to instead help people buy and keep their own private insurance. For the uninsured who can afford insurance but expect to be given free care at the hospital, require them to either pay for their own care or buy insurance; if they do neither, they would forgo the tax credit or lose a deduction. No more "free riders." is the basic plan I proposed in Massachusetts. It has worked: 360,000 previously uninsured citizens now have private health insurance. The total number of uninsured has been reduced by almost 75 percent. The Massachusetts plan costs the state more than expected, largely because the legislature has been unwilling to further reduce state payments to hospitals for free care. The costs should be brought in line by eliminating these payments, by requiring sustainable copremiums and by removing coverage mandates (for example, every policy is now required to include unlimited in vitro fertilization procedures).

2. Make health insurance affordable and portable. Eliminate the tax discrimination against consumers who purchase insurance on their own. This, plus getting everyone insured, will sharply lower insurance costs (in Massachusetts, the premium for a single male has declined by almost 50 percent). The result: Americans wouldn't have to worry that their insurance would be unaffordable or canceled if they changed or lost a job.

3. Give people an incentive to care how expensive and how good their health-care treatment will be. Learn from the French and Swiss experience with coinsurance, where the insured pays a given percent of the entire bill, up to some upper limit. Unlike a deductible, where there is no cost to the insured once a threshold has been reached, coinsurance means that the insured continues to care about cost.

4. Provide citizens with information about the cost and quality of providers and the effectiveness of alternative treatments. This transparency, when it's combined with a meaningful personal financial incentive, will help health care work more like a consumer market.

5.Reform Medicare and Medicaid, likewise applying market principles to lower cost and improve patient care.

6. Center reforms at the state level. Open the door to state plans designed to meet the various needs of their citizens. Before imposing a one-size-fits-all federal program, let the states serve as "the laboratories of democracy."

Republicans have introduced bills in Washington that promote these and other consumer-driven policies. In every one, the patient and doctor guide care, not the government—and that makes all the difference.

Romney is a former governor of Massachusetts.

Comment by Evelio Perez on September 30, 2009 at 5:29pm

Jim Cramer: Romney "Best Business Man in North America"
Uploaded by GovMittRomney. - Watch the latest news videos.

Comment by Evelio Perez on September 23, 2009 at 10:54pm

~~John Cronin~~





Obama could learn a thing or two about health care reform from Massachusetts. One, time is not the enemy. Two, neither are the Republicans.

By Mitt Romney

Because of President Obama’s frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track.

Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America’s families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

No other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured as Massachusetts. The bill that made it happen wasn’t a rush job. Shortly after becoming governor, I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to insure all our citizens. It took almost two years to find a solution. When we did, it passed the 200-member legislature with only two dissenting votes. It had the support of the business community, the hospital sector and insurers. For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.

Massachusetts also proved that you don’t need government insurance. Our citizens purchase private, free-market medical insurance. There is no “public option.” With more than 1,300 health insurance companies, a federal government insurance company isn’t necessary. It would inevitably lead to massive taxpayer subsidies, to lobbyist-inspired coverage mandates and to the liberals’ dream: a European-style single-payer system. To find common ground with skeptical Republicans and conservative Democrats, the president will have to jettison left-wing ideology for practicality and dump the public option.

The cost issue

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.

When our bill passed three years ago, the legislature projected that our program would cost $725 million in 2009. At $723 million, next year’s forecast is pretty much on target. When you calculate all the savings, including that from the free hospital care we eliminated, the net cost to the state is approximately $350 million. The watchdog Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concluded that our program’s cost is “relatively modest” and “well within initial projections.”

And if subsidies and coverages are reined in, as I’ve suggested, the Massachusetts program could actually break even. One thing is certain: The president must insist on a program that doesn’t add to our spending burden. We simply cannot afford another trillion-dollar mistake.

The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy. But overall, health care inflation has continued its relentless rise. Here is where the federal government can do something we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.

At the core of our health cost problem is an incentive problem. Patients don’t care what treatments cost once they pass the deductible. And providers are paid more when they do more; they are paid for quantity, not quality. We will tame runaway costs only when we change incentives. We might do what some countries have done: Require patients to pay a portion of their bill, except for certain conditions. And providers could be paid an annual fixed fee for the primary care of an individual and a separate fixed fee for the treatment of a specific condition. These approaches have far more promise than the usual bromides of electronic medical records, transparency and pay-for-performance, helpful though they will be.

Comment by Evelio Perez on September 19, 2009 at 10:37pm

Governor Romney's address to the 2009 Values Voters Summit
Sep 19, 2009


Thank you all very much. Tony, I appreciate your very kind words. And my thanks to all of you for the warm welcome. It’s good to see so many friends and leaders of the conservative movement from across America.

A year ago, there were quite a few people who were ready to write off this movement. They were enthralled by Barack Obama’s promise of near-Biblical transformations. Their legs were tingling.
He spoke majestically, framed by Greek columns. Well, he can still spin a speech, but he can’t spin his record. I’ll bet you never dreamed you’d look back at Jimmy Carter as the good old days.


I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Values Voters summit every year since 2004. I know that what brings us together is our allegiance to important and enduring values: the security of our country … the defense of freedom in the world … the success of our free enterprise system … and the fundamental rights of every person, including the right to life itself – these causes unite us…and they inspire us for the work ahead.

We know that America has always endured a chorus of critics, —people who claim that every ill, every failure in the world is America's fault.
But it has never before had a President who was conducting that chorus.
He told an Arab TV station that America has dictated to other nations. No, Mr. President, America has freed other nations from dictators. He told the Europeans that America has been arrogant, dismissive and derisive. No, Mr. President, in defending liberty, America has been diligent, dedicated and decisive.

Sure, when an American president journeys abroad, it’s always nice to see him applauded and praised. But when the price for that adoration is one apology after another for alleged offenses by the United States of America, it’s not worth it. Frankly, I’d rather see a president greeted abroad by complete silence, as long as he is defending our country’s character and not playing to our country’s critics!

These are times that call for a strong America.

China is on track to become the largest economy in the world. Russia under Putin is edging back to its old totalitarian ways, killing journalists, harassing political enemies, and invading a sovereign neighbor. Jihadists murder and threaten innocent people in nations around the world, and plot to attack us here at home.
The regime in North Korea sacrifices its own people to serve its nuclear ambitions. The regime in Iran, too, is moving fast to develop a nuclear weapon. And all the while, our economy is reeling and our debts are mounting.

Let me say it again: these are times that call for a strong America.

We know the source of America’s strength.
It is the citizens of this country, and all that a free people can achieve.
Free, hard working, family oriented, risk taking, opportunity-seeking, patriotic American people have always been the source of our strength, and they always will be.

And here in Washington, the best policies are those that expand their freedoms, broaden their opportunities, allow them to keep more of what they earn, afford them better education, let them choose their own healthcare, and turn loose the free enterprise system to create more jobs.

What President Obama has done these last eight months, and what he is proposing for the next three years, would not strengthen America, it would weaken America. His so-called stimulus is a case in point. The President sold it as an immediate boost that would hold unemployment below eight percent, restore the economy and create jobs. Rather than bring back the economy, it brought back 30 years of failed liberal programs. And he rushed it through before anyone could even notice. But we did notice, and we’re not impressed!

The economy is still shrinking even as the government keeps growing. Unemployment blew past eight percent to nearly 10 percent – that’s millions and millions more Americans out of work.
Not one new job has been created. The numbers of Americans opposing the Obama agenda are growing. The voters will make that clear in the 2010 elections. Now that’s a “public option” I agree with.

The President’s spending and borrowing has also weakened the nation.
In the month of July alone, he added 330 billion dollars to the deficit. His plan is to add another trillion dollars in debt every year he is in office. He initially admitted that the cumulative deficit would swell by seven trillion dollars over the next ten years, but now he acknowledges that nine trillion is more like it.
He would double our national debt in just five years. These deficits, combined with our liabilities for entitlements, threaten to cause a global collapse of confidence in America and in the dollar, and to precipitate an even deeper financial crisis.

Putting such a spirit-crushing, back-breaking debt burden on our children is unworthy of our national character. That is why I believe that this spending and borrowing is not just economically irresponsible, it is morally wrong!

To strengthen the economy and to create jobs, the President must stop trying to borrow this country out of a debt problem. I know there are people who are now talking about another stimulus bill for the economy. That’s the wrong answer. The right answer is to fix the stimulus we have—throw out the liberal, big-government programs and substitute incentives that will stimulate the private sector and actually create jobs. Don’t repeat the stimulus, repair the stimulus!

Taking more money away from working Americans would make us a weaker nation. Candidate Obama promised not to raise taxes—“by one dime”—on people making less than 250 thousand dollars a year. The President’s cap and trade program demolished that promise. The Obama team had secretly calculated that his plan would cost the average American family $1,761 a year, the equivalent to a 15% income tax hike. It kills jobs. And because it will simply move greenhouse gas emitters from America to other nations like China, it won’t do a thing to affect climate change. Democrats keep talking about climate change.
I think they’re confusing global warming with all the heat they’ve been taking at town halls.

I think we can all agree that it is a good idea to reform healthcare. Healthier Americans will make a stronger nation. Insurance companies shouldn’t drop people when they get sick.
We need to help people with pre-existing conditions. I think insurance should be portable and affordable. Republicans have proposed several healthcare reform bills. And this Republican worked to reform healthcare in my own state. Not every feature of our plan is perfect, but the lesson it teaches is this:
We can get everyone insured, without breaking the bank and without a government option—there is no government insurance in my Massachusetts reform. The right answer for health care is not more government, it’s less government.

President Obama says he wants “public option government insurance,” to give people “greater choice.” But what he doesn’t tell you is that there are more than a thousand insurance companies.

He says he wants an option that doesn’t have the burden of corporate profits. But what he doesn’t tell you is that there are plenty of major insurance companies that are not-for-profit.

He says he’d be satisfied with co-ops. But what he doesn’t tell you is that there are already co-ops and no legislation is needed to form more of them.

What he won’t say is what he really wants: a public option that over time becomes the only option. And if he gets what he wants, we know exactly where it would inevitably lead: to an entitlement with massive liability, to more borrowing, to denial of care or rationing just as they experience in Europe, and to the creation of dozens of government bureaucracies reaching into every hospital, every doctor’s office and every home. He’s not going to get his way, thanks to millions of Americas who have stepped up in town halls and tea parties across the country.
The Democrats call them a mob, crazies, trash—
I call them patriots.

I for one was not unhappy that the President chose to address our schoolchildren. The Heritage Foundation, in a January letter to the President, reminded him that he is in a unique position to help our children keep from making a critical and life-altering mistake. And that is having children before they are married. Forty percent of all children are now born out-of-wedlock. Of course, there are wonderful single parents who do a heroic job raising children in difficult circumstances.
But for the nation as a whole, we raise a stronger generation when they are raised by a Mom and a Dad.

A strong America depends on a strong defense. Rivals are pursuing designs and purposes very different from our own. We must never cut corners in funding and equipping the military and the intelligence services that defend our country. More than 150,000 of our people in uniform are still deployed in theaters of war. Nothing on the agenda of the President or Congress must come before the needs of our troops and the absolute necessity of their victory.

In the face of Iran’s rush to become a nuclear power, the President’s decision this week to walk away from our commitment to missile defense in Europe is alarming and dangerous. They say that Iran isn’t as close to becoming a nuclear threat as they once thought.
How can they possibly know that? They say this is a token of goodwill for Russia to get them to support sanctions on Iran. But the first rule of negotiation is this: only give something away when you get something.

From Israel, to Honduras, to the Czech Republic and Poland, it’s time the President treated our friends better than he does our foes.

We need to urge
pro-defense members of Congress – Democrats and Republicans alike – to hold firm, and to make the case for a military that is second to none. Those pro-defense congressmen and senators might feel outnumbered right now. But they shouldn’t lose hope, because we’re going to send them some reinforcements in next year’s election.

We’ve now gone eight years and eight days without being hit again at home. And over on the Left, they want very hard for us to believe that this fact has nothing whatever to do with the intensive interrogation of terrorists. You could listen all day long to the outpourings of the far left and never hear that obvious connection.

The administration plays right along. And now they’re actually talking about prosecuting the very intelligence officers who protected us by asking questions and getting answers. These intelligence officers don’t deserve to be hounded and lectured by the Left wing – they deserve the respect and thanks of every American, starting with the commander in chief.

We’re at a critical time in our nation’s history. America must not lose faith in the values and virtues that made the American way of life possible.
We must not allow big government activists to exploit the financial crisis that they themselves unknowingly enabled – to substitute their ideology for the wisdom and good sense of the American people.

There’s something else that should concern us when the federal government expands at such a rate. When government is trying to take over health care, buying car companies, bailing out banks, and giving half the White House staff the title of czar – we have every good reason to be alarmed and to speak our mind!

The current economic crisis was the result of many failures. Important guardrails were allowed to collapse, leaving many Americans unprotected from the descent of the financial and job markets. The last thing we need now is a collapse of even more guardrails, leaving us unprotected from the overreach of government.

Let me make a prediction, for our cause, and for all those who speak for it with no apology, we're about to see a comeback.
Voters in New Jersey have just about had it with the high-taxers in charge of their state. And just across the Potomac River, the signs are good that we’re about to see a low-tax,
pro-growth, pro-life governor of Virginia.

Nothing is certain in politics, but we can be certain about this: our belief in the greatness of America and our dedication to keeping this nation strong are needed today as much as they have ever been needed in our past.

I don’t deny that America’s challenges are great, or that overcoming them will require the best that we have to give.
But I know as well that times of difficulty always bring out the essential character of our fellow citizens. When I was a boy, my dad used to say that the pursuit of the difficult makes you strong. Well, the pursuit of the difficult will make America strong. We welcome the challenge. It will call on us, once again, to draw on the incredible resilience, ingenuity, and faith of the free men and women of the United States.

We don’t get to choose the tests and trials ahead. But we’re entirely free, you and I, to choose how we will meet those tests. We will meet them as conservatives have done before. We will find strength in each other, and answer our opponents with good will and honest words.

And we will go forward – committed to our ideals, confident of victories to come, and certain that God does indeed bless America.

Thank you.

Comment by Evelio Perez on August 29, 2009 at 11:27am

April 21, 2009 4:00 AM

A Timid Advocate of Freedom
President Obama has failed his early foreign-policy tests.

By Mitt Romney

At last week’s Summit of the Americas, President Obama acquiesced to a 50-minute attack on America as terroristic, expansionist, and interventionist from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. His response to Ortega’s denunciation of our effort to free Cuba from Castro’s dictatorship was that he shouldn’t be blamed “for things that happened when I was three months old.” Blamed? Hundreds of men, including Americans, bravely fought and died for Cuba’s freedom, heeding the call from newly elected president John F. Kennedy. But last week, even as American soldiers sacrificed blood in Afghanistan and Iraq to defend liberty, President Obama shrank from defending liberty here in the Americas.

In his first press interview as president, he confessed to Arabic television that America had “dictated” to other nations. No, Mr. President, America has fought to free other nations from dictators. And in Strasbourg, the president further claimed that America has “showed arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” London’s Daily Telegraph observed that President Obama “went further than any United States president in history in criticizing his own country’s action while standing on foreign soil.” Of course, it was not just the Daily Telegraph that was listening: People around the world who yearn for freedom, who count on America’s resolve and support, heard him as well. He was heard in China, in Tibet, in Sudan, in Burma, and, yes, in Cuba.

The words spoken by the leader of the free world can expand the frontiers of freedom or shrink them. When Ronald Reagan called on Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” a surge of confidence rose that would ultimately breach the bounds of the evil empire. It was the same confidence that had been ignited decades earlier when John F. Kennedy declared to a people surrounded by Communism that they were not alone. “We are all Berliners,” he said, because “freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s confident commitment, spoken as he led us into the war that would free millions in Europe, inspired not only Americans but freedom fighters around the globe: “The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” Such words of solidarity, of confidence, and of unwavering conviction that America is indeed “the last best hope on earth” are what freedom’s friends would have expected to hear from our president when our nation was slandered. Instead he offered silence, smiles, and a handshake.

Even more troubling than what he has or has not said is what he has not done. Kim Jong Il launched a long-range missile on the very day President Obama addressed the world about the peril of nuclear proliferation. As one of the world’s most oppressive and tyrannical regimes is on the brink of securing the “game changing” capability to reach American shores with a nuclear weapon, the president shrinks from action: no seizure of North Korean funds, no severance of banking access, no blockade.

Not to be outdone by Kim Jong Il, President Ahmadinejad announced that his nation has successfully mastered every step necessary to enrich uranium, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed. So, like North Korea, Iran will have changed the world’s equation for peace and security: It will be capable of devastating Europe and America, and of annihilating Israel. And as with North Korea, the Obama administration chooses inaction — no new severe sanctions, no hint of military options. Ahmadinejad can act with confidence that the forceful options once on our proverbial table have been shelved.

Vice President Biden was right that the new president would be tested early in his administration. What the world learned was not good news for freedom and democracy. The leader of the free world has been a timid advocate of freedom at best. And bold action to blunt the advances of tyrants has been wholly lacking. We are still very early in the Obama years — the president will have ample opportunity to defend America and freedom, and to deter nuclear brinkmanship. I am hoping for change.

Comment by Evelio Perez on August 18, 2009 at 9:45pm

By Mitt Romney

Because of President Obama's frantic approach, health care has run off the rails. For the sake of 47 million uninsured Americans, we need to get it back on track.

(Now insured: Francisco Diaz of Boston consults with nurse practitioner Anna Hackett Peterson./Josh T. Reynolds for USA TODAY; Mitt Romney./AP)


Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

No other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured as Massachusetts. The bill that made it happen wasn't a rush job. Shortly after becoming governor, I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to insure all our citizens. It took almost two years to find a solution. When we did, it passed the 200-member legislature with only two dissenting votes. It had the support of the business community, the hospital sector and insurers. For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.

Massachusetts also proved that you don't need government insurance. Our citizens purchase private, free-market medical insurance. There is no "public option." With more than 1,300 health insurance companies, a federal government insurance company isn't necessary. It would inevitably lead to massive taxpayer subsidies, to lobbyist-inspired coverage mandates and to the liberals' dream: a European-style single-payer system. To find common ground with skeptical Republicans and conservative Democrats, the president will have to jettison left-wing ideology for practicality and dump the public option.

The cost issue

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.

When our bill passed three years ago, the legislature projected that our program would cost $725 million in 2009. At $723 million, next year's forecast is pretty much on target. When you calculate all the savings, including that from the free hospital care we eliminated, the net cost to the state is approximately $350 million. The watchdog Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation concluded that our program's cost is "relatively modest" and "well within initial projections."

And if subsidies and coverages are reined in, as I've suggested, the Massachusetts program could actually break even. One thing is certain: The president must insist on a program that doesn't add to our spending burden. We simply cannot afford another trillion-dollar mistake.

The Massachusetts reform aimed at getting virtually all our citizens insured. In that, it worked: 98% of our citizens are insured, 440,000 previously uninsured are covered and almost half of those purchased insurance on their own, with no subsidy. But overall, health care inflation has continued its relentless rise. Here is where the federal government can do something we could not: Take steps to stop or slow medical inflation.

At the core of our health cost problem is an incentive problem. Patients don't care what treatments cost once they pass the deductible. And providers are paid more when they do more; they are paid for quantity, not quality. We will tame runaway costs only when we change incentives. We might do what some countries have done: Require patients to pay a portion of their bill, except for certain conditions. And providers could be paid an annual fixed fee for the primary care of an individual and a separate fixed fee for the treatment of a specific condition. These approaches have far more promise than the usual bromides of electronic medical records, transparency and pay-for-performance, helpful though they will be.

Try a business-like analysis

I spent most of my career in the private sector. When well-managed businesses considered a major change of some kind, they engaged in extensive analysis, brought in outside experts, exhaustively evaluated every alternative, built consensus among those who would be affected and then moved ahead. Health care is many times bigger than all the companies in the Dow Jones combined. And the president is rushing changes that dwarf what any business I know has faced.

Republicans are not the party of "no" when it comes to health care reform. This Republican is proud to be the first governor to insure all his state's citizens. Other Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sens. Bob Bennett and John McCain, among others, have proposed their own plans. Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves.

Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007.

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