Mitt Romney in 2012 wiki / Should we end the employer-based health care system

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Mr. Seib: Governor Romney, as you well know, health costs are a huge issue for the automakers in this city. Do you think the Republican Party should take the lead in ending the employer-based health care system we have now and replace it with something else? And, if so, what would that be?

Mr. Romney: Well, I don't believe in replacing what we have, but I believe in improving it. And the way we improve something is not by putting more government into it -- of course, that's what Hillary Clinton wants to do. "Hillary Care" is government gets in and tells people what to do from the federal government's standpoint.

In my view, instead -- the right way for us to go is to bring in place the kind of market dynamics that make the rest of the economy so successful.

So my plan gets everybody in American insured, takes the burden of free-riders off of our auto companies and everybody else and says, "Let's get everybody in the system."
Mr. Romney: And to do that, we say: Look, we're going to have states create their own plans -- we did it in our state and it's working. We're not going to have the federal government tell them how to do it.

Number two, we're not going to spend more money. Hillary Clinton's plan costs $110 billion.

Mine says, let's use the money we're already spending a little more wisely.
And number three, instead of having the federal government give you government insurance, Medicare and federal employee insurance, let's have private insurance.

But our solutions, as Republicans, have to be able to deal with the big issue of our time, economically, for the American family. And that's health care.

Get the cost of health care down; get everybody insured, but not in a government takeover, but by using the dynamics that have always made our markets -- other markets -- so successful.

And one more thing, and that is, our health care system, right now, really penalizes individuals that might want to buy their own insurance, as opposed to buying it through their company.

And that's why I propose that people should be able to get their insurance individually, and it should be that they get the same tax treatment as to whether the company buys it for them or they buy it for themselves.

And all medical expenses would be tax-deductible.

This issue, health care, is not a Democratic issue. It's a Republican issue. It's a Democratic fund-raising opportunity. They go out and use it to raise money. But the right thing for health care is for us to apply market dynamics to get people insured and to bring the cost of health care down. The plan that we put in place is doing just that.