Romney comes for foreign policy, leaves defending Mass. health care

[TomCADem]

Source: Boston Globe

LAS VEGAS – It was billed as a foreign policy address, but it didn’t take long before the most prominent issue that could haunt Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign came up.

The first question from the audience after his 24-minute address before the Republican Jewish Coalition here was not about Israel or unrest in the Middle East. It was about Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts.

Romney largely defended the rationale of the Massachusetts plan, saying that it helped spur greater health care coverage so uninsured residents wouldn’t simply go to emergency rooms for care.

But he sought to distinguish the plan from President Obama’s national plan by casting it as an issue of states’ rights.


Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2011/04/romney_comes_fo.html

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For those keeping score, after attacking his own plan, Romney is now trying to say that President Obama's health care plan is great, but that he should have let states adopt it themselves as a matter of state's rights. Of course, the Massachusetts health care plan was fashioned with a Democratic State legislature in negotiations with Romney, but of course he can't mentioned bi-partisanship, because the Tea Parties would eat him alive. So, while it may not be accurate to call the Massachusetts Health Care Plan Romneycare, it does put Romney in a pickle of trying to explain why Tea Partiers should support him.