We knew this before, but Mitt has tried to rewrite the history on this. Now that he's running for the Republican nomination, he says Romneycare was only a state plan, and never meant to be a model for the rest of the nation. He's especially renounced the individual mandate that's wildly unpopular with conservatives.
But Andrew Kaczynski has dug up evidence of Mitt advocating Romneycare for the nation, including a national individual mandate in writing. From Mitt Romney's USA Today op-ed in 2009:
Romney's Sage Advice For Obama
Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.
Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.
Mitt has been desperately trying to run away from Romneycare - despite the fact that by all accounts, it's been very successful. He's tried to argue that his plan in Massachusetts wasn't a model for the rest of the nation. But in 2009, before he realized how fanatical the GOP would be in opposing health care reform, he argued that Romneycare was a great model for America,
especially the individual mandate!
It'll be interesting to see how the Republicans react if Santorum/Gingrich take this issue and run with it. At the very least, if Romney's the nominee it'll be more than a little difficult for him to run against the individual mandate when Obama has his own advice to throw back at him.
At least the RedState crew is freaking out:
RedState FreakOut - Complete With Flashing Drudge Strobe Light!
I love some of the comments at RedState, but I couldn't put it any better than this:
Romney put this IN WRITING – and now he lies.
Good grief.