By Gary Howard<\/p>\n
Another post about Romneycare<\/a>? (Tim Shoemaker makes some similar points so check his out<\/a> too)? Why not?<\/p>\n From today’s WSJ<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n President Barack Obama <\/strong>found himself, once again, defending the health care overhaul this morning.<\/p>\n But this time he brought up former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Rommey<\/strong>, who has been positioning himself as a leader of the effort to repeal the health bill.<\/p>\n In an interview on NBC’s Today Show, the president told host Matt Lauer <\/strong>that the new law “is a critical first step in making a health care system that works for all Americans.” And in blunt terms, he blamed the GOP for the public uproar surrounding its passage. “I think the Republican Party made a calculated decision, a political decision, that they would not support whatever we did.” Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Well, that is interesting. Let’s read on.<\/p>\n Obama went on to say that “I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean, a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is this is similar to the bill that Mitt Rommey, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So Obama admits that he agrees with Republican ideas on healthcare. As a matter of fact, he based his whole bill on a really bad one. But Mitt keeps saying <\/a>that the bills are not alike.<\/p>\n From the Boston Globe<\/em>:<\/p>\n Mitt Romney offered an enthusiastic defense last night of the comprehensive health care law he helped create four years ago in Massachusetts, even as he pointed to crucial distinctions between it and a similar national program enacted last week by Democrats. He says it again in the same interview, just in case you didn’t hear him:<\/p>\n “People often compare his plan to the Massachusetts plan,” Romney said in an interview last month. “They’re as different as night and day. There are some words that sound the same, but our plan is based on states solving our issues; his is based on a one-size-fits-all plan.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But (in the same article) there are always people willing to point out those pesky facts:<\/p>\n “Basically, it’s the same thing,” said Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney and Obama administrations on their health insurance programs. A national health overhaul would not have happened if Mitt Romney had not made “the decision in 2005 to go for it. He is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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“Overall, ours is a model that works,” Romney said in response to a question after a speech at Iowa State University. “We solved our problem at the state level. Like it or not, it was a state solution. Why is it that President Obama is stepping in and saying ‘one size fits all’ ”? Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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