OOPs: Romney to Obama, 2009: Embrace the Individual Mandate

[kpete]

Romney to Obama, 2009: Embrace the Individual Mandate

As Rick Perry once said, "Oops."

The op-ed -- no longer available on USA Today's site, only a Romney fan site -- tells President Obama, "[T]he lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find" the solution to the healthcare dilemma.
http://mittromneycentral.com/op-eds/2009-op-eds/mr-president-whats-the-rush/

One of the most damning paragraphs reads,

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.[/b\ 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.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katehicks/2012/03/02/romney_to_obama_2009_embrace_the_individual_mandate