Although it's way too early to make such predictions, we all know that President Obama and Congressional Democrats have struggled on trying to craft a health care bill over the past year, and some of them may very well pay the price for whatever happens with this legislation with their jobs come November.
But could health care deleteriously affect Mitt Romney as well? The telegenic GOP presidential candidate in '08 and possibly in 2012 is in Florida today, appearing in Palm Beach County to hawk his new book, No Apology.
Yesterday, on Fox News Sunday, he was grilled by host Chris Wallace for his apparent hypocrisy when it comes to health care. Like virtually every other Republican who's been given the privilege of a platform, he has been trashing the proposed legislation that Congress has been debating over the past year. But Wallace challenged him on his criticism, given that the universal health care plan that he helped pass while serving as Governor in Massachusetts is said to strongly mirror what ObamaCare is all about.
Wallace tried his best to put Romney on the spot, asking him what's different between what he helped accomplish in the Bay State than what Obama is currently proposing. Several times Romney responded that his plan didn't raise taxes, cut Medicare or put controls on insurance companies.
WALLACE: Yeah, but I want to pursue this, if I may, Governor. The libertarian, and certainly the somewhat conservative, Cato Institute says that your plan in Massachusetts is a mirror — a mirror plan of "Obama-care." They say it's quite right you didn't raise taxes, but they say, in fact, you got millions of dollars from the federal government to finance your plan.
ROMNEY: Well, what we have is a plan which is paid for half by the state and half by the federal government. The cost is about 1.5 percent of the state budget.
And the federal dollars we received were federal dollars that we were entitled to through a program called DISH, the disproportionate share program. Federal funds had been applied to Massachusetts, just like to other states, for the care of those that were uninsured.
We said, "Let's take that money that's been going to hospitals that are caring for the uninsured and instead help people buy their own private insurance." No government insurance. No government option, if you will.
WALLACE: Well, there's no…
ROMNEY: Private health insurance.
WALLACE: … government option in the Obama plan anymore, either.
ROMNEY: No, that's right. That's right. And so what we did was entirely different than what President Obama is proposing on the bases that I'm taking you through.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2010.