Mitt Romney appears to have altered his position on the Obamacare ban on denying insurance to people with pre-existing conditions in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch editorial board. 
 
 “You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance,” said Romney, according to the paper. 
 
 “But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says, ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance.” 
 
 In the same interview with the Dispatch, he also argued that not having insurance does not in itself lead to deaths. 
 
 “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’” Romney said. “Instead you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” 
 
 Tune in to ABCNews.com on Thursday for livestreaming coverage of the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate in Danville, Ky. Coverage kicks off with ABC News’ live preview show at noon, and full debate coverage begins at 8 p.m. 
 
 Romney’s reference to a “choice” with regard to pre-existing conditions and his inclusion of giving opportunity to people “who are currently uninsured” would seem to contradict earlier statements from Romney and his own website, which suggest no ban on pre-existing conditions should be extended for people who don’t currently have insurance. A full transcript of the interview has not yet been posted by the Dispatch. The Romney campaign has not responded to a request for comment. 
 
 Read more about Romney and pre-existing conditions. 
 
 There were approximately 49 million non-elderly uninsured Americans in 2010, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report that utilized U.S. Census data. More than 70 percent of those have gone without insurance for a year or more, according to the report. 
 
 Here’s what it says on Mitt Romney’s website about pre-existing conditions: “Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage.” 
 
 That has been taken to suggest that he favors a ban on insurance companies discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions, but not for people who are currently uninsured. “Continuous coverage” generally means three months, so presumably a three-month gap is allowed. 
 
 Romney has backed this assessment up, most notably in an interview during the GOP primary this spring with Jay Leno, when Romney was careful to stipulate that someone would need to have had insurance. “People who have done their best to be insured are going to be covered,” said Romney. 
 
 “If they are 45 years old, and they show up and say, ‘I want insurance because I have heart disease,’ it’s like, ‘Hey, guys. We can’t play the game like that,’” Romney told Jay Leno during a March appearance on the “Tonight Show.” ”You’ve got to get insurance when you are well, and then if you get ill, you are going to be covered. 
 
 “People who have been continuously insured, let’s say someone’s had a job for a while and been insured, then they get real sick and they happen to lose a job, or change jobs, they find, ‘Gosh, I got a pre-existing condition. I can’t get insured,’ I’d say no, no, no. People with pre-existing conditions, as long as they have been insured before, they are going to be able to continue to have insurance,” he said. 
 
 In the presidential debate last week, Romney said, “I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions,” but he did not elaborate. ||||| Romney defends plan to repeal Obama healthcare law 
 
 By Elise Viebeck - 
 
 Repealing President Obama’s healthcare law would not keep people from getting insurance or quality care, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said Wednesday. 
 
 In an interview with the editorial board of the Columbus Dispatch, Romney defended his plans to repeal the healthcare law, saying the uninsured could still visit an emergency room and that people with preexisting conditions could keep their insurance. 
 
 “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” Romney said. 
 
 “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital,” he said. 
 
 “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance,” Romney added. 
 
 The comment drew criticism from the Obama campaign, which said it showed Romney did not understand the struggles of middle-class families that lack insurance. 
 
 “If he did, he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage,” said Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith. 
 
 Healthcare is a challenging issue for Romney, who backed an overhaul of the healthcare laws in Massachusetts as that state's governor that President Obama has said served as a basis for his own federal healthcare law. 
 
 Romney embraces the Massachusetts law, but argues that different states should be free to set up their own healthcare laws. He has described "ObamaCare" as a federal takeover of state healthcare law. 
 
 In the interview in Columbus, Romney also said he would ensure people with preexisting conditions could not be blocked from getting health insurance as long as they previously had health insurance. But he suggested insurance companies would not be obliged to cover people with preexisting conditions who had never had been insured. 
 
 “You have to deal with those people who are currently uninsured, and help them have the opportunity to have insurance," Romney told the Columbus newspaper. 
 
 "But then once people have all had that opportunity to become insured, if someone chooses not to become insured, and waits for 10 or 20 years and then gets ill and then says ‘Now I want insurance,’ you could hardly say to an insurance company, ‘Oh, you must take this person now that they’re sick,’ or there’d literally be no reason to have insurance." 
 
 The comments come as Romney has sought to edge toward the political center with some of his remarks. After an impressive debate performance last week, polls have shown Romney edging into a lead over Obama, and the two men are intensely fighting over centrist, Independent voters. 
 
 Obama's healthcare law remains unpopular in polls, and conservatives argue it will raise taxes and limit growth while adding to the deficit. 
 
 Obama and the law's supporters argue it will lower government spending and national healthcare costs, in part by requiring younger, healthier people to purchase insurance. 
 
 Federal law requires that virtually every U.S. hospital treat anyone who arrives needing emergency care, a guarantee passed in 1986 as part of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). 
 
 The law was designed to prevent the situation Romney described on Wednesday — uninsured Americans dying in their homes for lack of care — but it also creates a “free-rider” problem by burdening hospitals with costs they pass to other patients. 
 
 Smith cited a report by the liberal advocacy group Families USA, which supports the healthcare law, that found 26,000 Americans die every year because of a lack of health coverage. 
 
 In 2009, nonpartisan researchers at Harvard Medical School pegged the number of U.S. deaths related to lack of coverage closer to 45,000 annually. 
 
 This story was updated at 3:30 p.m. ||||| A growing collection of websites selected by the National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) of the National Library of Medicine, which focuses on the discussions surrounding possible changes, repeal, or reform of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Enacted in 2010, The Affordable Care Act has implications both for coverage and utilization of health care as well as the relationship of public health to the general health care system. With a change in the political administration in the White House and the Senate, a priority for the administration became a focus for the government. The websites examined in this collection will reflect the debates taking place in the government, and will have been influential in influencing the eventual decisions reached by the Government. Website captures began in late 2016, with the aim of capturing discussions of repeal/replace/revise conversations that will occur over the next following 4 years. The collection will focus on data, analyses, and proposed changes by highlighting websites, blogs, collections of white papers, reports, and news items from high-value analytic and policy sources. These sources reflect all political and value perspectives, to give the most concise picture of the debate. ||||| L 
 
 iberal critics of Mitt Romney's plan to repeal ObamaCare argue that a President Romney would leave tens of millions of Americans without health insurance they would otherwise have under Obama's reform law. In a meeting with the Columbus Dispatch editorial board this week, Romney sought to downplay the harm that such an insurance-revoking plan would cause. "We don't have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don't have insurance," Romney said, repeating a claim he made last month on 60 Minutes. Is Romney right, or is he underestimating the dangers faced by the nation's tens of millions of uninsured Americans? Here, a brief guide: 
 
 
 
 First off: What exactly did Romney say? 
 
 He told the newspaper's editors that even those without health-insurance coverage have a safety net, because federal law prohibits hospitals from turning even uninsured people away when they show up to an emergency room. "We don't have a setting across this country where if you don't have insurance, we just say to you, 'Tough luck, you're going to die when you have your heart attack,'" Romney said. "No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it's paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital." 
 
 
 
 Is Romney right? 
 
 About the law, yes, he is, says Rebecca Leber at Think Progress. Emergency rooms really do serve as "a place of last resort" for the uninsured. Still, an analysis released in 2009 by Harvard Medical School researchers found that 45,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance. That's one person every 12 minutes. Other studies have put the figure lower — the Institute of Medicine estimated in 2002 that about 18,000 people die annually because they're uninsured. Indeed, the consensus among researchers is that you run a greater risk of dying if you're not insured. 
 
 
 
 Why do uninsured Americans die if hospitals must admit them? 
 
 Hospitals have to treat them in the emergency room, but many patients don't get there until it's too late. And patients with chronic conditions often can't afford care they need on a regular basis — basic services that emergency rooms aren't set up to provide. "For any doctor," Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a co-author of the 2009 study, told Reuters, "it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent." 
 
 
 
 Why is Romney talking about this at all? 
 
 He's stuck with "defending his emergency-room plan as a tenable solution," says Steve Benen at MSNBC, because he knows full well his proposal to gut ObamaCare will strand tens of millions of Americans with no coverage. "The reality is plain for anyone who cares: Americans die because they lack basic coverage," and forcing hospitals and taxpayers to foot the bill for free emergency room care is "the most inefficient system of socialized medicine ever devised." But Romney isn't talking about returning to the pre-ObamaCare status quo, says John Hinderaker at Power Line. He wants to help get more people covered by doing things like "banning discrimination" against people with pre-existing conditions. So disagree with him if you must, but don't distort his plans. 
 
 
 
 Sources: Columbus Dispatch, MSNBC, PowerLine, Reuters, Think Progress 
 
 Read more political coverage at The Week's 2012 Election Center. ||||| Politics Romney: ‘We Don’t Have People Who Die Because They Don’t Have Insurance’ 
 
 Mitt Romney doubled down on his suggestion that uninsured Americans can find the care they need in emergency rooms, telling The Dispatch that people will always receive the treatment they need, and do not die or suffer because they can not pay for care. He pointed to federal law that requires hospitals to admit emergency patients, repeating his advice that patients rely on the most expensive form of care reserved strictly for emergencies. Romney told the Columbus Dispatch: 
 
 “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal. “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance — although hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs. 
 
 Emergency rooms serve as a place of last resort, but 45,000 Americans still die every year because they lack health insurance, or one every 12 minutes. Uninsured adults under age 65 are also at a 40 percent higher death risk. Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care. 
 
 Romney’s health care proposal would leave 72 million Americans without health insurance and wouldn’t provide all uninsured Americans with a stable source of insurance. ||||| Supporters of the health care reform hold signs outside a health care town hall meeting with U.S. congressman Kendrick Meeks in Miami, Florida September 3, 2009. 
 
 WASHINGTON Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday. 
 
 "We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters. 
 
 Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage. 
 
 The findings come amid a fierce debate over Democrats' efforts to reform the nation's $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare industry by expanding coverage and reducing healthcare costs. 
 
 President Barack Obama's has made the overhaul a top domestic policy priority, but his plan has been besieged by critics and slowed by intense political battles in Congress, with the insurance and healthcare industries fighting some parts of the plan. 
 
 The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was released by Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors government-backed or "single-payer" health insurance. 
 
 An similar study in 1993 found those without insurance had a 25 percent greater risk of death, according to the Harvard group. The Institute of Medicine later used that data in its 2002 estimate showing about 18,000 people a year died because they lacked coverage. 
 
 Part of the increased risk now is due to the growing ranks of the uninsured, Himmelstein said. Roughly 46.3 million people in the United States lacked coverage in 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported last week, up from 45.7 million in 2007. 
 
 Another factor is that there are fewer places for the uninsured to get good care. Public hospitals and clinics are shuttering or scaling back across the country in cities like New Orleans, Detroit and others, he said. 
 
 Study co-author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler said the findings show that without proper care, uninsured people are more likely to die from complications associated with preventable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. 
 
 Some critics called the study flawed. 
 
 The National Center for Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank that backs a free-market approach to health care, said researchers overstated the death risk and did not track how long subjects were uninsured. 
 
 Woolhandler said that while Physicians for a National Health Program supports government-backed coverage, the Harvard study's six researchers closely followed the methodology used in the 1993 study conducted by researchers in the federal government as well as the University of Rochester in New York. 
 
 The Harvard researchers analyzed data on about 9,000 patients tracked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics through the year 2000. They excluded older Americans because those aged 65 or older are covered by the U.S. Medicare insurance program. 
 
 "For any doctor ... it's completely a no-brainer that people who can't get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent," said Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
 
 (Editing by Xavier Briand)
– A comment from Mitt Romney on health insurance is making waves, especially among critics on the left. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch editorial board (in all-important Ohio), Romney sought to convey the notion that sick people wouldn't be left high and dry with the repeal of ObamaCare. His quote: “We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack. No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government, or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” It's that last part getting the most attention: White House: If Romney understood middle-class struggles, "he wouldn’t claim that no one in this country dies because they don’t have health insurance when, in fact, experts estimate that 26,000 people die prematurely every year because they don’t have coverage." See the Hill for more on that. ThinkProgress: Emergency rooms don't cut it as a last resort. "Hospitals may treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay, but patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference are often unable to access needed care," writes Rebecca Leber. She cites a study putting the yearly death toll as a result at 45,000. The Note blog at ABC News thinks Romney might have actually shifted his position on pre-existing conditions in the interview, and The Week has more background and context on Romney's statements.