Romneycare Equals Obamacare

 The end justifies the means. This may come as a surprise to you, but from 1989
until 2009, Republicans supported the very thing they now claim to detest. For
years, they supported a health care plan that featured the individual mandate,
the requirement that each American must purchase health insurance or pay a
penalty. But now Republicans abhor the individual mandate. Why the change of
mind? As we shall see, they think the end justifies the means.

In 1993, Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island introduced his party's
alternative (the Health Equity and Access Reform Act Today) to the Clinton
health care bill. Chafee's bill was supported by 19 other Republicans in the
Senate. According to Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein (6/22/12). "You
want to know what was at the core of the bill? It was an individual mandate.
It's right there in section 1501."

"Section 1501, Requirement of Coverage, (a) Effective January 1, 2005, each individual who is a citizen . . .shall be covered under a qualified health plan."

Klein notes that the penalty was covered in section 5000A. "There is hereby
imposed a tax on the failure of any individual to comply with requirements of
section 1501."

But now, Republican Mitt Romney asks us to engage in the ultimate doublethink; to believe that he adamantly opposes the very same health care bill (including an
individual mandate) that he created, sponsored, and helped pass while governor
of Massachusetts.

MIT economics professor John Gruber worked as an advisor to Mitt Romney and helped craft the Massachusetts health care bill. He later went to Washington, D.C. to help the Obama administration develop a health plan patterned after the one
that became law in Massachusetts.

He was asked how the Romney plan for Massachusetts  later became so reviled by national Republicans. Gruber replied, "This is, to my mind, the most obvious case
of politics trumping policy I have ever seen in my life. Because this is an
idea that four or five years ago, Republicans were touting. A guy from the
(conservative) Heritage Foundation spoke at the bill signing in Massachusetts
about how good this bill was." (Maddow, 6/29/12)

Gruber went on to say that any attempt by Romney to claim that the bills are different is disingenuous. "The problem is there is no way to say that because
they're the same (bleep)ing bill. He can't have his cake and eat it, too.
Basically, you know, it's the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and
stuff, but he's just lying."

So, we come back to the same question. Why did Republicans suddenly decide that a health care bill they for so long had supported was now a terrible idea?

Ezra Klein notes, "It was as late as June 2009, that Senator Chuck Grassley,
the top Republican on the committee that dealt with health care legislation
said it had bipartisan support. 'I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus
to have individual mandates.'"

"Six months later, in December 2009, every single Senate Republican voted to call
the individual mandate unconstitutional, every single one."

Why did Republicans change? Because President Obama came to support the
Massachusetts plan, and things Obama supports are to Republicans bad by
definition. You may remember that Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said
famously that his number one goal was to make Obama a one term president. If
Obama were to pass health care legislation, that would increase Obama's chance
at re-election. 

Thus, if it were necessary for Republicans to do a massive, coordinated flip-flop and oppose Romney's (and Obama's) health care legislation, so be it. The end
justifies the means. The only losers would be the 30 million American people
presently without health care.  And the fate of the public is not uppermost in the minds of power-hungry politicians.