Romney Dissembling on Health Care

All candidates try to put their best foot forward and take credit for things done by others. But Mitt Romney is doing this to the extreme when talking about the Massachusetts health care reform:

(Romney) decries "socialized medicine" and says the Massachusetts plan is "all a private initiative, a private-based, market-based healthcare" -- omitting the fact that the state and federal governments subsidize much of the overall cost and that a public board negotiated the benefits and prices that private insurers now offer.

He wows audiences by telling them that premiums for individuals dropped from $350 a month to $175 a month, without clarifying that those figures are for the lowest-cost plan available for 37-year-olds and without mentioning that for many people, especially the elderly, premiums can be several hundred dollars more.

And he sometimes downplays the role that Democrats on Beacon Hill had in putting together the final plan.

This is my favorite part:

Romney has also implied that the new insurance law banned insurers from rejecting anyone based on a preexisting condition.

Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Commonwealth Connector, said, however, that the state's prohibition on rejecting applicants became law in the 1990s, before Romney was governor.

Mitt Romney: proudly leading the way on things that were already in place before he got there! Did you know that Romney ended the Civil War? OK, not really, but did the Civil War re-start while he was in office in Massachusetts? No! So, there you have it.

The Massaschusetts health care plan was written by Democrats, and when Romney vetoed certain parts of it, the Legislature overrode his veto. As the Speaker of the Massachusetts House said, "our bill ... became law despite Mitt Romney, not because of him."