He used even more colorful language back in 2007, talking to Fox News host Glenn Beck. “When they show up at the hospital, they get care; they get free care paid for by you and me,” he said. “If that’s not a form of socialism, I don’t know what is.”
But in addition to flip-flopping, Romney is missing a key fact about the uninsured and emergency room care, says health policy professor Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago. Just because hospitals are required to see patients in the emergency room doesn’t mean that care is required to be free.
“The emergency room is perfectly entitled to send you a whopping bill,” said Pollack. “And there are many people across America who are facing significant financial problems from serious bills that they’ve received for emergency care.”
It’s only when the uninsured don’t — or can’t — pay those bills that the costs come back to the taxpayers. Pollack also says that Democrats and Republicans largely agree that emergency rooms are wholly inappropriate places for most people to get healthcare.
MORE: Romney Medicaid Remarks Raise Eyebrows : It’s All Politics : NPR.