During Thursday night’s GOP debate, a woman from Florida told the candidates she’d lost her job and with it her health insurance. What would each of the candidates do to get her covered or otherwise provide the health care she needed?

You had to listen carefully, but the effective answer they all gave her was, “this is your problem, not ours.”

Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh today, happened to notice that none of the current GOP candidates is worthy of running for the office. Seems they’re either not crazy enough or they support RomneyCare or they’re just wingnuts. Who knew? It’s time for Elmer Fudd to go hunting.

The article proclaims that RomneyCare “achieved its main goals.” But nowhere in the 4,600+ word article does it treat “ensuring MA residents get access to health care” as one of RomneyCare’s goals. Instead, it reports on RomneyCare’s great success at ensuring MA residents get health insurance. And given the article’s admission that the cost of the program is unsustainable, the distinction is critical.

Ever since Jon Walker and I pointed out the real and superficial similarities between Paul Ryan’s proposed RyanCare for future seniors and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) structure for non-seniors, numerous pundits have been trying to deny either the similarities or the differences.

The big political issue for Mitt Romney’s future is that the Republican base hates the health care law pushed by President Obama, and that law is structurally almost identical to the state level reform Romney signed as Governor of Massachusetts. Romney’s most recent effort to try to thread the needle on this issue has gotten him slammed by the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. They call him basically the worst thing you could call any Republican primary candidate, no better than a Democrat.

Given the incredible structural similarity between the Massachusetts health care reform law signed by Mitt Romney and the new national Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama, the release of the annual physician workforce survey from the Massachusetts Medical Society has generated a lot of attention. But I would caution everyone involved that on issues like the impact ACA will have on ER use or physician availability, what has happened in Massachusetts might be a very poor guide to predict what will happen nationally.

Jim DeMint’s position on the Mitt Romney/Barack Obama health care plan has, er, shifted a teeny tiny wee bit.

A pig is a pig, even if it has Mitt Romney’s lipstick on it. For the affected groups, the basic outline of RomneyCare is the same as the basic outline of ObamaCare is the same as the basic outline of StupidRyanCare. Let’s review the features. . . .

Now that President Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership no longer need to hide from their base that the new health care law is in fact a pro-health insurance industry Republican plan as part of a push to enact the law, they are openly admitting the plan’s true origins. This bill is a not a “progressive” or “centrist” piece of legislation but a Republican idea put forward by the Heritage foundation and is almost identical to the reform advocated by the health insurance lobby.

Today’s New York Times hands over a portion of its op-ed page to Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) to explain what Republicans would do to replace Obamacare, a.k.a., Armageddon and the end of American democracy as we know it. Answer: a government takeover of health insurance.