Unfortunately, the Republican most likely to occupy the Oval Office come 2013, Mitt Romney, has the spottiest track record on the issue. Obamacare is virtually a carbon copy of the health-care reforms Romney approved as governor of Massachusetts.
Most of the folks expected to gain coverage under Obamacare - about 18 million - are simply being thrown into Medicaid, the health-insurance program for low-income Americans funded jointly by the federal and state governments. The same goes for Romneycare: Of the 442,000 Bay State residents insured since it was enacted in 2006, 80,000 are enrolled in Medicaid, and 176,000 are in a publicly subsidized plan.
Furthermore, Obamacare is set to push individual insurance premiums up 10 to 13 percent over the next four years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And thanks to Romneycare, Massachusetts residents are enjoying such insurance rate hikes before everyone else. Family health premiums in the state are the highest in the country, at nearly $14,000 per year. Economists at Stanford and Columbia found that Massachusetts' reform law increased premiums for employer-sponsored insurance by about 6 percent.
Romney has done his best to distance himself from his handiwork. During his New Hampshire victory speech, he said of Obamacare, "I'll repeal it." But back in 2010, Romney told a crowd that he was more in favor of a piecemeal approach that would "repeal the bad and keep the good" in Obama's law. Voters could be forgiven for skepticism about his commitment to a repeal.
