Heritage Cheered Romneycare in 2006
Well this is an interesting find. The Heritage Foundation, which supported the individual mandate for a long time, praised Mitt Romney’s universal health care law in Massachusetts when it passed in 2006. In fact, they had a team of people advising him on how to do it.
In reality, those who want to create a consumer-based health system and deregulate health insurance should view Romney’s plan as one of the most promising strategies out there. I know, because I’ve been part of the Heritage Foundation team advising the governor and his staff on the design, which builds on some of my work with officials in other states.
The overall design has two basic parts: reforming the state’s insurance market structure and reforming its uncompensated-care payment system.
And how did it reform its uncompensated-care payment system? By requiring everyone to have health insurance to end the free rider problem, enforced through a tax penalty. You know, the same thing Obama’s plan does that is now causing us to become the Fourth Reich.