There he goes again. Newsmax has published an
interview with Mitt Romney in which he once again touts his
big government Massachusetts health care plan as a monumental
success:
"What we were able to accomplish was to get almost all of our
citizens insured without breaking the bank and without having a
so-called public option," Romney says. "I think the program is
a real success and that it can teach lessons to other states,
and to the nation."
To start with, Romney is wrong on the merits. Michael Cannon has
done an excellent job
documenting what a colossal failure Romneycare has been,
bringing higher costs and longer wait times to citizens of
Massachustetts. The Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation
numbers Romney cites in his interview understated the cost of
the legislation by, among other things, ignoring the program's
cost to the federal government. Even the state's Democratic State
Treasurer, Timothy P. Cahill, has
told the Boston Globe that the promised savings from
the universal health care legislation never materialized, and he
cautioned that, "It's a warning for the federal government as it
looks to do something similar.''
It's bad enough that Romney would be so dishonest about
conditions in Massachusetts, but its worse that at a crucial time
in the national health care debate, Romney is publicly defending
liberal policies, giving ammunition for Democrats to argue that
their proposals are moderate when in reality they would amount to
a government takeover of health care. While Romneycare did not
include a "public option," neither does the Baucus bill, which is
nearly identical to Romneycare in every meaningful way. Like the
Massachusetts plan, Baucus would mandate that individuals
purchase health insurance or pay a tax, expand Medicaid, and
provide government subsidies to individuals to purchase
government-designed insurance policies from a government-run
exchange. While free market conservatives have been trying to
push back against Obama's insistence that mandates are not a
middle-class tax hike, Romney is out there defending the idea of
a mandate, by making the same arguments as Obama.
If Romney wants to advocate government-run health care policies,
that's his business -- but he should not be viewed in any way as
an economic conservative, and should not be seen as a credible
conservative standard bearer in 2012. He's gone from being
dishonest about his record to advance his own political career,
to being dishonest about his record in a way that helps expand
government and advance liberal policy goals.
