By Susan Misur, Register Staff
smisur@newhavenregister.com

NEW HAVEN — President Barack Obama’s health care plan is a fraud and will bankrupt America, said Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff, as he offered his own solutions to coverage issues.

Rove, now a media political analyst, addressed about 450 people in Levinson Auditorium at the Yale Law School in an debate titled, “Resolved: Repeal Obama-Care.”



The event was co-sponsored by the Yale Political Union, Yale Law School Federalist Society and Young America’s Foundation as part of the Irving-Brown Lecture Series and prompted a barrage of hisses and applause throughout the evening as various viewpoints were expressed.

“The president said it would not add a dime to the deficit,” Rove said of the new health care plan. “And he’s right. We’re going to add trillions of dimes to the deficit.”

The bill was passed to provide medical coverage to 46 million uninsured Americans. But Rove said 9.7 million are legal and illegal immigrants, and, “We shouldn’t pick up the cost for people who aren’t U.S. citizens.”

Others who don’t have health insurance can afford it, he says, and still others are uninsured but eligible for government coverage.

The government should focus on signing up those who are already eligible for programs, instead of enforcing a new plan that “discombobulates 380 million Americans,” he explained.

Rove said to improve health care and offer more affordable options, policies should be able to cross state lines, just as auto insurance does. He also suggested allowing small businesses to join together to get discounts similar to those given to large companies, and starting risk pools for those finding it difficult to get insurance.

The country should also strive to maintain a competitive market for insurance companies, he added. Continued...

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Obama’s policy contains “shenanigans in order to make it look like it works, and it’s going to bankrupt the country,” Rove stated.

Yale sophomore Jeremy Weltmer, a member of the Party of the Right, addressed the crowd and offered a viewpoint supporting Rove’s, favoring risk pools and transparency of health care costs.

“People don’t know what health care costs anymore. They pay one arbitrary number a year and are told that’s what health care costs,” Weltmer said, adding that the insurance reform doesn’t cut costs or fix health care.

“We need to make it an institution people can actually afford to purchase,” he said.

However, senior David Broockman, a member of the Liberal Party, countered that Obama’s health care policy is needed to ban discrimination on those with pre-existing conditions, help poverty-stricken Americans acquire insurance and lower costs. He said not being able to get insurance because of a pre-existing condition could literally be a death sentence for some.

Considering every other industrialized nation has universal health care, the United States should be able to also offer such a program, Broockman said.

He called Rove’s claims a “thicket of distortions” and said, “No matter what Rove believes, we can do it here and we’re off to a great start.”

Call Susan Misur at 203-789-5742.

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