Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney slammed President Barack Obama’s takeover of the nation’s health sector, just hours before the president is scheduled to arrive in the state to defend his crippled program.
The slam effectively preempted Obama Boston speech, which is expected to say that Americans should accept Obamacare’s problems because it is modeled on Romney’s centralization of the Massachusetts health sector. Progressives approved the state’s centralization; conservatives oppose it.
“Had President Obama actually learned the lessons of Massachusetts health care, millions of Americans would not lose the insurance they were promised they could keep, millions more would not see their premiums skyrocket, and the installation of the program would not have been a frustrating embarrassment,” he said in a Wednesday statement.
The president’s speech is intended to contain growing public criticism of his plan, which subordinates Americans’ health-care plans to his priorities.
For example, Obama’s deputies have required insurance companies to cancel at least two million Americans’ pre-Obamacare plans, so they can be forced to buy government-designed plans via the crippled Obamacare website.
Next up, employer-provided insurance plans now being used by more than 150 million Americans will be refashioned or canceled throughout 2014 to comply with the president’s priorities.
“In the years since the Massachusetts health care law went into effect nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country,” said Romney.
“Health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers, as we did, without raising taxes, and by carefully phasing it in to avoid the type of disruptions we are seeing nationally,” he concluded.