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September 30, 2011
Romney Says The Heritage Foundation Agrees With Him On Romneycare and Mandates, But They Have Changed Their Position
Romney Says The Heritage Foundation Agrees With Him On Romneycare and Mandates, But They Have Changed Their Position
Mitt Romney's Romneycare dilemma: Heritage Foundation disowns mandates
The drip-drip-drip of conservative opposition to Mitt Romney and his Massachusetts healthcare reform law is threatening to swamp the former governor's presidential ambitions. Now, a prominent conservative think tank is taking aim at a central tenet of Romneycare -- the individual mandate.
The Heritage Foundation, which promotes free market, pro-business, and conservative ideas, is now disowning its previous advocacy for mandates requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. In the process, the foundation is making an awkward situation for Romney even more excruciating.
Romney says his support for the Massachusetts law is compatible with his opposition to the national healthcare law because the issue should be left to the individual states. He says he supports Republican calls for repealing the national law.
But the Heritage Foundation is not taking aim at Romney's criticisms of Obamacare -- which appears to be symptomatic of Romney's reputation for flip-flopping political opportunism -- but at the very law he signed in 2006.
In a Washington Post column that was meant as a scathing rebuke of President Obama for crediting the Heritage Foundation with the idea of the individual mandate, the foundation's healthcare policy expert Robert Moffit explained how the foundation has changed it's position in recent years.
Moffit claims that the individual mandate is not only unconstitutional, but also does not do what it is supposed to do -- eliminate "free-riders" in the system.
Romney has been trying for weeks to put daylight between his Massachusetts plan and the Obamacare plan, while still taking credit for enacting the reform in the first place.
It's a precarious position to be in. But the Heritage Foundation just made Romney's position that much more untenable.
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Wild Thing's comment........
I wish the media and the debates would talk more about Romneycare then this constant bashing of Perry and things that he has already answered over and over and also all of the things that were lies have been debunked. Meanwhile Romney skates through and no one is hammering Romney about Romneycare.
Posted by Wild Thing at September 30, 2011 03:50 AM
Comments
Living up next to Massachusetts the biggest problem is that the state slid downward during the Romney Governorship.
Posted by: Avitar at September 30, 2011 07:30 PM
Avitar, I did not know that, thank you for the information. I have read that his Romneycare was not as popular as he likes to say.
Posted by: Wild Thing at October 1, 2011 04:05 AM
