If elected President, Mitt Romney would likely attempt to make major changes in health care policy, according to a Perspective published online October 10, 2012 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Co-written by John McDonough—professor of the practice of public health and Director of the Center for Public Health Leadership at Harvard School of Public Health—the article offers a glimpse of what health care policy under a President Romney might be like. While Romney’s proposals “provoke questions more than they provide answers,” the authors wrote, the candidate’s campaign website, public addresses, debates, interviews, and other statements suggest that he would try to repeal large portions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), transform Medicare and Medicaid in ways that would increase people’s costs and curtail benefits, and make massive cuts in federal spending on all health programs.
Romney’s “fundamental policy proposal is to undo the ACA, the nation’s most consequential health care reform law,” the authors wrote. “His replacement proposals would provide no meaningful security to people who would lose the law’s coverage protections. His Medicare and Medicaid proposals would irrevocably transform these programs. His budget and tax proposals would threaten the country’s basic health infrastructure as few in living memory have done.”
Listen to an NEJM interview featuring HSPH’s John McDonough
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