This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Last Sunday on 60 minutes, Scott Pelly asked Gov. Mitt Romeny: "Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don't have it today?"
Romney replied: "We do provide care for people who don't have insurance, people — we — if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and — and die. We — we pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care."
Then Pelly commented: "That's the most expensive way to do it."
Not surprising, Romney was against emergency room care for the uninsured before he was for it. In 2006, after his universal health care law was passed in Massachusetts, Romney criticized using expensive emergency rooms.
And just two years ago, he told MSNBC: "It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to have millions and millions of people who have no health insurance and yet who can go to the emergency room and get entirely free care for which they have no responsibility."
Today's Romney says what he thinks conservatives want to hear. The Romney of the past was speaking an obvious truth to Americans. Too bad the latter isn't running.
Richard Townsend
Salt Lake City