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MR. LEHRER: All right, I think we have another clear difference between the two of you. Now let's move to health care, where I know there is a clear difference — (laughter) — and that has to do with the Affordable Care Act, "Obamacare."
And it's a two-minute new segment, and it's — that means two minutes each. And you go first, Governor Romney. You wanted repeal. You want the Affordable Care Act repealed. Why?
MR. ROMNEY: I sure do. Well, in part, it comes, again, from my experience. I was in New Hampshire. A woman came to me, and she said, look, I can't afford insurance for myself or my son. I met a couple in Appleton, Wisconsin, and they said, we're thinking of dropping our insurance; we can't afford it. And the number of small businesses I've gone to that are saying they're dropping insurance because they can't afford it — the cost of health care is just prohibitive. And — and we've got to deal with cost.
And unfortunately, when — when you look at "Obamacare," the Congressional Budget Office has said it will cost $2,500 a year more than traditional insurance. So it's adding to cost. And as a matter of fact, when the president ran for office, he said that by this year he would have brought down the cost of insurance for each family by $2,500 a family. Instead, it's gone up by that amount. So it's expensive. Expensive things hurt families. So that's one reason I don't want it.
Second reason, it cuts $716 billion from Medicare to pay for it. I want to put that money back in Medicare for our seniors.
Number three, it puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea.
Fourth, there was a survey done of small businesses across the country. It said, what's been the effect of "Obamacare" on your hiring plans? And three-quarters of them said, it makes us less likely to hire people. I just don't know how the president could have come into office, facing 23 million people out of work, rising unemployment, an economic crisis at the — at the kitchen table and spent his energy and passion for two years fighting for "Obamacare" instead of fighting for jobs for the American people.
It has killed jobs. And the best course for health care is to do what we did in my state, craft a plan at the state level that fits the needs of the state. And then let's focus on getting the costs down for people rather than raising it with the $2,500 additional premium.
MR. LEHRER: Mr. President, the argument against repeal.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, four years ago when I was running for office I was traveling around and having those same conversations that Governor Romney talks about. And it wasn't just that small businesses were seeing costs skyrocket and they couldn't get affordable coverage even if they wanted to provide it to their employees; it wasn't just that this was the biggest driver of our federal deficit, our overall health care costs. But it was families who were worried about going bankrupt if they got sick — millions of families, all across the country.
If they had a pre-existing condition they might not be able to get coverage at all. If they did have coverage, insurance companies might impose an arbitrary limit. And so as a consequence, they're paying their premiums, somebody gets really sick, lo and behold they don't have enough money to pay the bills because the insurance companies say that they've hit the limit. So we did work on this alongside working on jobs, because this is part of making sure that middle-class families are secure in this country.
And let me tell you exactly what "Obamacare" did. Number one, if you've got health insurance it doesn't mean a government take over. You keep your own insurance. You keep your own doctor. But it does say insurance companies can't jerk you around. They can't impose arbitrary lifetime limits. They have to let you keep your kid on their insurance — your insurance plan till you're 26 years old. And it also says that they're — you're going to have to get rebates if insurance companies are spending more on administrative costs and profits than they are on actual care.
Number two, if you don't have health insurance, we're essentially setting up a group plan that allows you to benefit from group rates that are typically 18 percent lower than if you're out there trying to get insurance on the individual market.
Now, the last point I'd make before —
MR. LEHRER: Two minutes —
PRESIDENT OBAMA: — before —
MR. LEHRER: Two minutes is up, sir.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: No, I — I think I've — I had five seconds before you interrupted me — was — (laughter) — that the irony is that we've seen this model work really well in Massachusetts, because Governor Romney did a good thing, working with Democrats in the state to set up what is essentially the identical model. And as a consequence, people are covered there. It hasn't destroyed jobs. And as a consequence, we now have a system in which we have the opportunity to start bringing down cost, as opposed to just —
MR. LEHRER: Your five —
PRESIDENT OBAMA: — leaving millions of people out in the cold.
MR. LEHRER: Your five seconds went away a long time ago. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: That —
MR. LEHRER: All right, Governor. Governor, tell the — tell the president directly why you think what he just said is wrong about "Obamacare."
MR. ROMNEY: Well, I did with my first statement.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You did.
MR. ROMNEY: But I'll go on.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Please elaborate.
MR. ROMNEY: I'll elaborate.
Exactly right.
First of all, I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together. What you did instead was to push through a plan without a single Republican vote. As a matter of fact, when Massachusetts did something quite extraordinary, elected a Republican senator to stop "Obamacare," you pushed it through anyway. So entirely on a partisan basis, instead of bringing America together and having a discussion on this important topic, you pushed through something that you and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid thought was the best answer and drove it through.
What we did, in a legislature 87 percent Democrat, we worked together. Two hundred legislators in my legislature — only two voted against the plan by the time we were finished.
What were some differences?
We didn't raise taxes. You've raised them by a trillion dollars under "Obamacare." We didn't cut Medicare. Of course, we don't have Medicare, but we didn't cut Medicare by $716 billion. We didn't put in place a board that can tell people ultimately what treatments they're going to receive.
We didn't — we didn't also do something that I think a number of people across this country recognize, which is put — put people in a position where they're going to lose the insurance they had and they wanted. Right now, the CBO says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as "Obamacare" goes into effect next year. And likewise, a study by McKinsey & Company of American businesses said 30 percent of them are anticipating dropping people from coverage. So for those reasons, for the tax, for Medicare, for this board and for people losing their insurance, this is why the American people don't want — don't want "Obamacare." It's why Republicans said, do not do this.
And the Republicans had a — had a plan. They put a plan out. They put out a plan, a bipartisan plan. It was swept aside. I think something this big, this important has to be done in a bipartisan basis. And we have to have a president who can reach across the aisle and fashion important legislation with the input from both parties.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Governor Romney said this has to be done on a bipartisan basis. This was a bipartisan idea. In fact, it was a Republican idea.
And Governor Romney, at the beginning of this debate, wrote and said, what we did in Massachusetts could be a model for the nation. And I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate, but the fact of the matter is, we used the same advisers, and they say it's the same plan.