Taking to the radio waves on Philadelphia’s WNTP 990 this Wednesday, surging GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich performed a mea culpa on the AM dial on climate change before turning to Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law.
The former house speaker addressed the issue with Philadelphia native Mark Levin, a Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Temple University.
The conservative radio host queried Gingrich on a key component of Obamacare: the individual mandate, which requires all US citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a fine for noncompliance.
Levin talks turkey
While questioning the former House speaker on the subject, the radio host made it clear he was interested in elucidating policy positions rather than providing ammunition for Gingrich’s GOP primary competitors.
“Listen by the way, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.” he prefaced.
“I know there’s a lot of opposition research that goes on, and these campaigns spill it out there and then everybody’s digging it up and looking at it. I get that, I’m not trying to kneecap conservatives in this race. I’m trying to get to the bottom of a few of these issues, just so you know.”
“Now the individual mandate, you were for it at one point – right?” Levin continued.
“I was for it.” Gingrich acknowledged.
“We were trying to solve the problem of what do you do about the person that has money, refuses to buy insurance, ends up as sick and essentially says to their neighbors take care of me.”
Flaws with the universal mandate
The speaker cited both concerns about the constitutionality of an individual mandate on the national level as well as fears of where this expansion of federal authority would lead as reasons for his abandonment of the idea.
“Once you go down that road you begin to so thoroughly politicize the entire health system because you’ve got to decide what’s in the mandate. Who’s going to get favored? Who’s not going to be in the mandate?” he explained.
“You just take all the medicine out of healthcare. And it all ends up being totally politicized.” Gingrich elaborated.
“So I concluded that it simply wasn’t workable, and at the federal level I think it’s unconstitutional because a court which could mandate you to buy their version and their definition of health insurance could mandate you to do everything, and that’s the direction we’ve been drifting [toward] for the last fifty years.”
New England’s nominal GOP frontrunner
The topic then turned to Massachusetts, where Gingrich’s presidential rival Mitt Romney implemented an individual mandate requiring citizens to purchase healthcare.
Only 5.3% of Massachusetts residents remain uninsured five years after its enactment.
However, universal insurance coverage has not translated into greater healthcare affordability. The program has proved extremely expensive and the state’s healthcare costs remain among the highest in the country.
“So bottom line is you reject it. And you see it doesn’t work in Massachusetts – I don’t think.” Levin remarked.
Newt’s critique of his own performance at the October 18th GOP presidential debate in Los Vegas seemed to preview a rejoinder to Mitt Romney in their next inevitable face-off on healthcare and the individual mandate.
“If I had been clever…when Romney came back at me at one of the debates and said well you were for it. If I’d been clever I would have said yes Mitt. And I was wrong and why don’t you recognize that you’re wrong too?”
Follow John Goodman on Twitter here
Part 1 in this series, Newt Gingrich talks with radio host Mark Levin: climate change, is available here
A free podcast of Mark Levin’s radio program is available here. His interview with Newt Gingrich appears at the conclusion of his November 16th podcast
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