Romney Can’t Back Away From Obamacare

SAying Romney has to reconcile his position on Romneycare to BHO's program of Obamacare does not even qualify to be something as significant as nonsense.

The Republicans have had two primary criticisms of Obamacare. The first, that it is a constitutionally inappropriate use of the Commerce Clause, was vindicated but mooted by the SCOTUS in its decision Thursday, wherein a five justice majority found that Obamacare, indeed, did constitute an entirely impermissible use of the Commerce Clause, but another five justice majority found that the first finding was moot, because Obamacare was a proper legislative enactment under the Congress's Tax and Spend powers. Just for the record, that issue never had anything to do with Romneycare. Romneycare was a State enactment; State governments don't derive any of their of their sovereign powers from the federal constitution. Whether Mitt Romney correctly interpreted the Massachusetts Constitution (which he apparently did) or Barack Obama correctly interpreted the federal Constitution (which he apparently didn't, though he was found to have backed into a Constitutionally valid program) were never questions that belonged in the same conversation, let alone had to be reconciled.

The second question, the policy question of whether mandating a program that forces all US citizens to secure health insurance is a wise use of government funding and authority, remains on the table. Just like the legal question, however, the policy question presented by Obamacare has little to do with Romneycare. The majority of US States have only the most rudimentary legal frameworks for the provision of medical services to resident indigents of the State at public expense. And the residents of those States, to a greater rather than lesser degree, like it that way. What Obamacare in the main represents is an attempt to compel those states (including many whose coverage approach is more than rudimentary, but far from comprehensive) to compel their citizens to secure medical coverage.

A significant minority of States (and/or municipalities therein), however, such as New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, have extensive systems of publicly funded medical care long pre-dating enactment of any significant federal funding of medical services. The origins of Boston's municipal hospital system, for instance, including Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital, predate the Civil War. Romney, when he became Governor of Massachusetts, took as a given that MA's citizens did not want extensive reform of the institutions delivering their medical care; what they wanted was relief from the mammoth cost funding those institutions had become. He delivered. Federal officials wouldn't let Romney merely swap out State and local dollars for federal dollars, they had a long history of opposing that; they would however, let him craft a new approach to eligibility for MA's Medicaid program that, to their minds, justified substituting huge amounts of federal money for what previously had been State/local money.

If Barack Obama can get the UN to step up to funding the major share of Obamacare costs, Mitt Romney will have a problem; until then, those who are trying to convince us that Romney owes us an explanation are just blowing smoke.