Apartments

Mitt Romney was asked by the Columbus Dispatch about how people who don't have health insurance will get health care and Romney had this to say:

Romney minimized the harm for Americans left without health 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,’  ” 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.”

Now, look, that's not a good answer for all kinds of reasons that interesting policy wonks like Ezra Klein can explain better than I can.

But what I'd like to focus on is the last phrase there. " ... who die in their apartments ..." Romney used this same word, "apartments" when he was on Jay Leno a few weeks back making exactly the same point.

I would submit to you that this tells you everything you need to know about how Mitt Romney views people who are without insurance, people who are lower middle class or poor, etc. They live in apartments. Not homes, not houses. Apartments. In Romney's world, it is still 1952 ... and he's talking about Ralph Kramden. Ralph lives in his apartment and is perfectly fine with that and has a heart attack and gets health care in the Emergency Room.

That's how health care works in Romney's view. And that's how the Ralph Kramdens of the world live in Mitt Romney's view.