Romney: No Insurance for Preexisting Conditions

If you're uninsured and have a pre-existing condition, Mitt Romney doesn't think you should be able to get health insurance. Romney told Jay Leno as much last night, in a clip pointed out by Greg Sargent of the Washington Post. If "they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, 'Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well,'" Romney said.

Otherwise, Romney said, everyone would wait until they were sick to get covered. Of course, that's exactly why the individual mandate exists, Sargent observes, and that's why Romney instituted it in Massachusetts. But thanks to primary politics "he's forced to give a nonsensical answer to the core policy and moral question that's left behind if we do away with Obamacare: What should the federal government do about those who can't get insurance coverage?" Romney's answer, "for all practical purposes, is: Nothing." (More Mitt Romney stories.)