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October 12, 2011
White House Met With Three Romney Advisors to Draft Obamacare
White House met with three Romney advisors to draft Obamacare
The Obama administration may have relied much more heavily on Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare legislation as a blueprint for Obamacare than was previously believed.
White House visitor logs obtained by NBC News revealed that three of Romney’s healthcare advisers had up to a dozen meetings with senior administration officials, including one in the Oval Office presided over by President Barack Obama.
“They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model,” MIT economist and Romney healthcare adviser Jon Gruber told NBC.
What’s more, the records show Gruber was given a $380,000 contract in 2009 to help draft new legislation based on the Massachusetts healthcare law.
The White House tapped another Romney adviser, John Kingsdale, who in 2006 was put in charge of the state agency tasked with implementing Romney’s healthcare plan. In 2009, Kingsdale attended three White House meetings on healthcare.
A third Romney adviser, John McDonough, attended four White House healthcare meetings. McDonough shared an “innovator in health” award with the Massachusetts governor, after leading a health advocacy group in Massachusetts and working with Romney as a consumer advocate on the legislation.
Though Obama has repeatedly said that he modeled Obamacare on Romney’s healthcare plan, Romney has tried to wash his hands of the association.
“He does me the great favor of saying that I was the inspiration of his plan. If that’s the case, why didn’t you call me?” Romney said in a GOP debate. “Why didn’t you ask what was wrong? Why didn’t you ask if this was an experiment, what worked and what didn’t? … I would have told him, ‘What you’re doing, Mr. President, is going to bankrupt us.’”
Obamacare’s most unpopular feature, the individual mandate that requires all citizens to purchase a healthcare plan, was lifted wholesale from Romney’s healthcare reform package, which he touted as a way of “expanding coverage to all our citizens.”
Gruber’s involvement is the most damning association for Romney, and the GOP candidate has done his best to play down the connection. Gruber, however, has not.
He told NBC that Romney was “the father of health-care reform. I think he is the single person most responsible for health care reform in the United States. … If Mitt Romney had not stood up for this reform in Massachusetts … I don’t think it would have happened nationally. So I think he really is the guy with whom it all starts.”
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Wild Thing's comment.......
Romney was never ever consrvative. Rick Perry is and always has been conservative, but he was the victim of a Romney “gotcha” moment where the anti-Hispanics in the GOP got to portray him as soft on “illegals.” He’s not soft on illegals of any ethnic background, and the state of Texas has spent a fortune on border control under him.
Posted by Wild Thing at October 12, 2011 03:55 AM
Comments
Romney is another McCain or Dole type Repub. Moderate at best, liberal at worst. They do a lot of damage which is difficult/impossible to undo. In Romney's case he lies in denying his non conservative actions. A smooth talker.
If Perry is elected I hope he works at cleaning out the GOP/RNC hierarchy.
Posted by: TomR, armed in Texas at October 12, 2011 12:50 PM
Tom, your right Romney sure is a smooth talker whew. He takes these debates and runs with them and anyone else there.
Perry is horrible in debates in comparison but I noticed something. Perry is a true gentlemen he almost is too polite, waiting, not to interrupt etc. It really concerns me because of all the candidates Perry would be the one to make an awesome President. I see it and how he would be a great one. If he can just win.
Posted by: Wild Thing at October 12, 2011 11:30 PM
