W. James Antle, III
The American Spectator
5/16/2011
…Constitutionally, state governments retain powers not delegated to the federal government. But even if this technical-sounding yet important legal distinction could hold the public’s imagination in an election-year fight over health care, the federalism argument will not be sufficient for Romney.
Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan was designed in part by experts who supported an individual mandate at the federal level. (The state mandate, by the way, was a central component of Romney’s original Massachusetts proposal. Although he initially preferred a bond for people who chose to go without insurance, the mandate was neither incidental to his health care plan nor entirely a creation of the Democratic legislature.)
One was MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who went on to help devise the federal law signed by Obama. He subsequently said Romney’s approach “gave birth” to Obama’s. “I’m a Dem through and through,” Gruber told Newsweek, “but Romney really knocked my socks off.”…
…Team Obama plans to use this history to drown out the federalism argument and blur differences with Romney’s current federal health care proposals. “We wholly endorse flexibility and we obviously feel that Massachusetts took a smart approach towards health care reform,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. “Its provenance was so mainstream, there are great similarities between Massachusetts’ law, the Affordable Care Act and legislation proposed by then Rhode Island Republican [Senator] John Chafee in 1993.”
Carney also touted the federalism and flexibility allowed by the waivers that can be granted to states under current federal law. And don’t be surprised if they start pointing out that the federal government pays 20 percent of the Massachusetts program’s costs through Medicaid…
Read the complete article at The American Spectator.
