Reply #8: You know, the health care law in MA should not be fully attributed to Romney's ideas

[frazzled]

The Democratically controlled legislature in Massachusetts was going to deal with health care (I knew policy people when I lived there who had been working on it a long time). Romney was going to have to deal with it when he was elected, and his veto to a legislature-generated plan would probably not have stood. He had to produce a plan, and that plan was changed by the Democratic legislature.

In November 2004, political leaders began advocating for major reforms of the Massachusetts health care insurance system to expand coverage. First, the Senate President Robert Travaglini called for a plan to reduce the number of uninsured by half. A few days later, the Governor, Mitt Romney, announced that he would propose a plan to cover virtually all of the uninsured.
At the same time, the ACT (Affordable Care Today) Coalition introduced a bill that expanded MassHealth (Medicaid and SCHIP) coverage and increased health coverage subsidy programs and required employers to either provide coverage or pay an assessment to the state. The coalition began gathering signatures to place their proposal on the ballot in November 2006 if the legislature did not enact comprehensive health care reform, resulting in the collection of over 75,000 signatures on the MassACT ballot proposal. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation also sponsored a study, "Roadmap to Coverage," to expand coverage to everyone in the Commonwealth.<14>
Attention focused on the House when Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, speaking at a Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation Roadmap To Coverage forum in October 2005, pledged to pass a bill through the House by the end of the session. At the forum, the Foundation issued a series of reports on reform options, all of which included an individual mandate. At the end of the month, the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing approved a reform proposal crafted by House Speaker DiMasi, Committee co-chair Patricia Walrath and other House members.<15>
Massachusetts also faced pressure from the federal government to make changes to the federal waiver that allows the state to operate an expanded Medicaid program. Under the existing waiver, the state was receiving $385 million in federal funds to reimburse hospitals for services provided to the uninsured. The free care pool had to be restructured so that individuals, rather than institutions, received the funding.<16>
Legislation

In fall 2005 the House and Senate each passed health care insurance reform bills. The legislature made a number of changes to Governor Romney's original proposal, including expanding MassHealth (Medicaid and SCHIP) coverage to low-income children and restoring funding for public health programs. The most controversial change was the addition of a provision which requires firms with 11 or more workers that do not provide "fair and reasonable" health coverage to their workers to pay an annual penalty. This contribution, initially $295 annually per worker, is intended to equalize the free care pool charges imposed on employers who do and do not cover their workers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform

If the WH modeled their proposals on the MA plan, it was because that plan was one that was able to pass in a state with bipartisan support. He wanted something that was semi-tested and could pass.