There is a ton of misinformation about Mitt Romney’s approach to pre-existing conditions floating around. This misinformation is usually coupled with stories of people saying “without Obamacare I could never get health insurance.” Here is how Governor Romney’s plan would actually work[^fn1]:
> Romney’s plan would fix this and extend to the entire health system, including the individual market, the HIPAA protections that work well today in the group market. This would allow millions of people to move seamlessly from group to individual coverage, and back again, so long as they stay continuously insured. That alone will dramatically reduce gaps in coverage that are so frequent today.
It would also help those people who currently do not have insurance:
> First, regarding the uninsured, it would be a relatively straightforward policy to allow anyone who didn’t have continuous coverage to join insurance without penalty at the initiation of this program. Providing this kind of “open enrollment” option would be a powerful mechanism for reducing the ranks of the uninsured.
Finally, and most importantly the cost of healthcare:
> Of course, the real problem here is that health care is far too expensive, as Romney argued in the debate. The source of this problem is misguided federal tax and entitlement policies that discourage sensible economizing in the health sector. Instead of fixing these flaws, Obamacare doubles down on the current system by expanding enrollment into the existing entitlement structure.
In summary, Governor Romney’s approach would actually address the problems that Obamacare was allegedly trying to solve, without crushing the US economy and harming small businesses in the process.
[^fn1]: This explanation comes from James C. Capretta writing for National Review.