THREE CHEERS FOR ROMNEYCARE!

February 1, 2012


If only the Democrats had decided to socialize the food industry or housing, Romneycare would probably still be viewed as a massive triumph for conservative free-market principles -- as it was at the time.

It's not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In 2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4 percent of all health care expenditures in the country.

Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance was considered the free-market alternative to the Democrats' piecemeal socialization of the entire medical industry.

In November 2004, for example, libertarian Ronald Bailey praised mandated private health insurance in Reason magazine, saying that it "could preserve and extend the advantages of a free market with a minimal amount of coercion."

A leading conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, helped design Romneycare, and its health care analyst, Bob Moffit, flew to Boston for the bill signing.

Romneycare was also supported by Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and health policy analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute. Herzlinger praised Romneycare for making consumers, not business or government, the primary purchasers of health care.

The bill passed by 154-2 in the Massachusetts House and unanimously, 37-0, in the Massachusetts Senate -- including the vote of Sen. Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy's seat in the U.S. Senate in January 2010 by pledging to be the "41st vote against Obamacare."

But because both Obamacare and Romneycare concern the same general topic area -- health care -- and can be nicknamed (politician's name plus "care"), Romney's health care bill is suddenly perceived as virtually the same thing as the widely detested Obamacare. (How about "Romneycare-gate"?)

As The New York Times put it, "Mr. Romney's bellicose opposition to 'Obamacare' is an almost comical contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there." This is like saying state school-choice plans are "the same idea" as the Department of Education.

One difference between the health care bills is that Romneycare is constitutional and Obamacare is not. True, Obamacare's unconstitutional provisions are the least of its horrors, but the Constitution still matters to some Americans. (Oh, to be there when someone at the Times discovers this document called "the Constitution"!)

As Rick Santorum has pointed out, states can enact all sorts of laws -- including laws banning contraception -- without violating the Constitution.

That document places strict limits on what Congress can do, not what the states can do. Romney, incidentally, has always said his plan would be a bad idea nationally.

The only reason the "individual mandate" has become a malediction is because the legal argument against Obamacare is that Congress has no constitutional authority to force citizens to buy a particular product.

The legal briefs opposing Obamacare argue that someone sitting at home, minding his own business, is not engaged in "commerce ... among the several states," and, therefore, Congress has no authority under the Commerce Clause to force people to buy insurance.

No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.

There's no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves with guns and a state forcing adults in today's world to equip themselves with health insurance.

The hyperventilating over government-mandated health insurance confuses a legal argument with a policy objection.

If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional, but it wouldn't be the godawful train wreck that it is. It wouldn't even be the godawful train wreck that high-speed rail is.

It would not be a 2,000-page, trillion-dollar federal program micromanaging every aspect of health care in America with enormous, unresponsive federal bureaucracies manned by no-show public-sector union members enforcing a mountain of regulations that will bankrupt the country and destroy medical care, as liberals scratch their heads and wonder why Obamacare is costing 20 times more than they expected and doctors are leaving the profession in droves for more lucrative careers, such as video store clerk.

Nothing good has ever come of a 2,000-page bill.

There's not much governors can do about the collectivist mess Congress has made of health care in this country. They are mere functionaries in the federal government's health care Leviathan.

A governor can't repeal or expand the federal tax break given to companies that pay their employees' health insurance premiums -- a tax break denied the self-employed and self-insured.

A governor can't order the IRS to start recognizing tax deductions for individual health savings accounts.

A governor can't repeal the 1946 federal law essentially requiring hospitals to provide free medical services to all comers, thus dumping a free-rider problem on the states.

It was precisely this free-rider problem that Romneycare was designed to address in the only way a governor can. In addition to mandating that everyone purchase health insurance, Romneycare used the $1.2 billion that the state was already spending on medical care for the uninsured to subsidize the purchase of private health insurance for those who couldn't afford it.

What went wrong with Romneycare wasn't a problem in the bill, but a problem in Massachusetts: Democrats.

First, the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature set the threshold for receiving a subsidy so that it included people making just below the median income in the United States, a policy known as "redistribution of income." For more on this policy, see "Marx, Karl."

Then, liberals destroyed the group-rate, "no frills" private insurance plans allowed under Romneycare (i.e. the only kind of health insurance a normal person would want to buy, but which is banned in most states) by adding dozens of state mandates, including requiring insurers to cover chiropractors and in vitro fertilization -- a policy known as "pandering to lobbyists."

For more on "pandering" and "lobbyists," see "Gingrich, Newt." (Yes, that's an actual person's name.)

Romney's critics, such as Rick Santorum, charge that the governor should have known that Democrats would wreck whatever reforms he attempted.

They have, but no more than they would have wrecked health care in Massachusetts without Romneycare. Democrats could use a sunny day as an excuse to destroy the free market, redistribute income and pander to lobbyists. Does that mean Republicans should never try to reform anything and start denouncing sunny days?

Santorum has boasted of his role in passing welfare reform in the 1990s. You know what the Democrats' 2009 stimulus bill dismantled? That's right: the welfare reform that passed in the 1990s.

The problem isn't health insurance mandates. The problem isn't Romneycare. The problem isn't welfare reform. The problem is Democrats.

Bravo, Ann, Bravo! There is little to add because you have said it so well. Romney did more than a few things when governor that made me cringe as a conservative. Romney-care was not one of them.

Awesome explanation on the differences between what Obama foisted on the entire country and what Romney was trying to do in the state of Mass. before Dem's got their hands on it.

I agree with Ann on this and I hope everyone takes the time to read it.

Thank you.

The real Ann Coulter has been kidnapped by space aliens. This was written by Chuck Shumer.

"Three Cheers for a really poor legislative achievement because it was done at the state level (in accordance with the Constitution) instead of the federal level!"

Yeah, right.

There are plenty of reasons to vote for Mitt Romney -- this isn't one of them.

Ann Coulter:
Romneycare "shows, even the failure of statewide universal care."

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4fHmHXwvQU[/youtube]

From earlier in the same interview
"If elected, we don't have to worry about him [Romney] making that mistake [Romneycare] again."
"...it's not a free market solution"

"It's a good ad. It's probably Romney's biggest problem, and that was a very strong ad, though I must say there are differences between doing it just in a state and doing it nationally. You can leave a state. You can't leave the country, or at least not quite as easy.

And the other thing is, I mean, the country has spoken. They do not want national health care. Romney himself has said, whatever he says about -- about what he did in Massachusetts, he says his first day in office, he will issue 50 state waivers to Obamacare, every state. We don't have to worry about him making that mistake again.
What it reminds Republicans -- but I think we all knew this -- is that he's not a pure free-marketeer. The Heritage Foundation, by the way, signed off on Romneycare and also in a small defense of Romneycare, though it is not a free market solution

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2011/10/11/ann-coulter-analyzes-perrys-romneycare-attack-ad#ixzz1lByzBuiV

Mark Levin
Ann is "Romney Zombie"

http://thedaleygator.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/mark-levins-rebuttal-of-ann-coulters-three-cheers-for-romneycare-article-the-right-scoop/

Ann, For the first time that I can remember, I completely disagree with you. The most important thing here - the fundamental issue - is whether or not the government, at any level, may legitimately compel citizens to engage in commerce whether they want to or not. The answer to that question is "no", a thousand times, "no." It is not a sufficient justification for shredding our liberty, that the prior system was an expensive mess. You and so many millions seem to believe in the Nancy Pelosi School of thought of, "You gotta do something, don't you?" Well, no....you don't. Sometimes the correct answer is don't do anything. If the system was destined to fail because it was too expensive due to federal mandates, then let it fail. The worse thing you can do is try to prop up an inherently bad idea with bailing wire and spit. It'll only delay the inevitable collapse and insure far more people get hurt in the fall. And in this case, the inevitable fall comes complete with the precedent established that government can and will give us marching orders to buy health insurance, or healthy food, or GM cars "for the good of the nation."

One thing that seems to have been missed by the "conservative" thinkers who tackled the problem is that the state could always use wage garnishments or arrange monthly payment plans for people who tried to game the system. Let's face it, the truly indigent would and will never pay in any case. So the whole point of the exercise was to get money for the system from those who can pay but refuse. Well, if they can pay, then they can pay in installments voluntarily or by garnishments without doing violence to the relationship between the people and their masters in government bureaucracies.

The plain fact is that RomneyCare is as unconstitutional and as dangerous to our liberty as ObamaCare. Just because RomneyCare is restricted to Massachusetts does not change the principles involved. It was wrong and Romney would have been wise to disavow it long before now and even wiser never to have signed it into law in the first place. Better to have had the monstrosity hanging exclusively around Democrat necks.

Clear headed and well reasoned, as usual!

What happen to Ann?

Ann has it absolutely right on this. I read the Heritage Foundation papers on this back when it was being instituted. They were very favorable.

Levin is an angry little dope (he loves that word so much). Supporting Newt to run against Obama makes as much sense as a cavalry charge against a machine gun nest —picturesque but suicidal.

I'll give this some thought

Can the government redress theft of services? The fundamental issue is that citizens who can afford their own healthcare, leave it to other citizens to pay for it. I have yet to hear a cogent solution for what lies at the heart of the problem. And for the record, Romneycare does not compel citizens to purchase anything. If you do not want to purchase insurance, and can not show the financial ability to pay for your own healthcare( by posting a bond ), you are subject to a fine, when you pay your taxes. The fine is for theft of services. Whether or not a citizen uses the healthcare system, the rest of the citizens are forced to provide health care insurance for them without the benefit of any premium. For any citizen, insured or not, will eventually need healthcare services. They are de facto, insured for those services by the rest of us.

The government, at the state level, has the right, and I would argue, the duty to protect citizens from unlawful theft of property. And an insurance policy is as much property, as any financial instrument. Citizens do not have the right to take healthcare insurance, without paying for it.

Aliens? Romney Zombie? Ann Coulter has written a well researched, well argued defense of Romney-care, and this is your response? Did she get her facts wrong? Is her reasoning flawed? Please enlighten us. But if you can not respond with a well researched, well argued critique, than just admit she got it right and move on...

Ann, you missed the mark wide this week. Like most people who know little or nothing about the healthcare or health insurance industry, you missed the forest for the trees. Don't feel bad, every political pundit I've read or heard has.

What you and the others miss is that health insurance costs are not the problem. Healthcare costs are the problem. Health insurance isn't complicated. Premiums get paid into a pool of money, and that pool of money gets paid out to healthcare providers, minus the costs to administer the plan. The industry standard for admin costs is about 18%, so for every premium dollar that gets paid in, be it from the government, employer, or individual, about 82 cents gets paid out to the doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc., and 18 cents stays with the insurer. Keeping this in mind, it's easy to see the real driver of costs isn't the insurer, it's the providers. These admin costs have stayed pretty consistent for well over a decade, and have actually gone down as the digital era has lowered expenses. What have gone up is the price providers charge for their services. If providers increase their charges 20%, the premiums are going to go up 20%, if they charge 20% less, the premiums go down.

The huge problem with Romneycare or Obamacare is they both focus on insurance costs, and do absolutely nothing to reign in provider costs. This didn't happen by accident. The last time someone tried to reign in provider costs was Hillary Clinton with Hillarycare, and we know how that ended up. What many people don't know is it wasn't Republicans who killed Hillarycare, it was the providers who made an effort to tell every patient in their care that Hillarycare was going to put their healthcare at risk, and encouraged all these millions of patients to call or write their elected members of Congress to oppose the effort. This is also why the first group to be lobbied by the Obama White House was the AMA and other providers, and also why the language of the bill was quickly changed from healthcare reform to health insurance reform. They got the doctors onboard by telling them there would be no price controls on their end, and got their support by tossing taxpayers under the bus.

Any attempt at health insurance reform, be it Romneycare or Obamacare is always going to be a failure necause it doesn't address the problem of provider costs. It's like giving someone who's house is on fire a wet blanket to hide under instead of putting the fire out. As long as providers are free to raise their rates at will, insurance rates will continue to climb regardless of who's paying the premiums, how premiums are paid, or how many Americans are buying them. The real solution to the problem is not more insurance but less. The best plan would be one that limits health insurance coverage to catastrophic coverage only and forces providers to lower their charges to a point where patients can pay for them out-of-pocket and compete for business, i.e., make providers function just like most other businesses.

Do you remember anything else?

That the plan was concocted when the Dems had the Congress and the White House and were preparing to pass Hillary-care, and that the purpose of the limited mandate on upper incomes to buy insurace was intended to draw off Democrat support for Hillary-care? That is, to get the Democrats not to vote for Hillary-care by mitigating what they argued were the "problems" of free-riders and uninsured WITHOUT the kind of government takeover that is Hillary-care, Obama-care and Romney-care?
That eventually, after the threat of Hillary-care passed, the Heritage Foundation repudiated the plan?

Because if you logic is - the Heritage Foundation says so, therefore it must be so - then go ahead and apply it. Heritage has repudiated the individual mandate.

Wow, what an impressive point-by-point refutation. The only way you could have been more convncing is to call him a caca-doody-head.

No. actually I haven't responded/ The conservative movement is responding. I thought Levin's response covered 90 percent of what I would have said, and a few thing I didn't think. Rather amazing performance with no prepration, don't you think? BTW, I noticed on Free Republic, someone made a similar joke to me, saying that Ann must have been sleeping near a pod (a reference to Invasion of the Body Snatchers). So, it's not a point that isn't being made everywhere.

I would reject your proposition that a defense of socialism can be well researched and argued, because socialism is fundamentally a lie - an principle of logic Ann used to make in books, columns and speeches. So, Ann's column is as well-argued and well-argued as Das Kapital or Cass Sunstein's work, and for exactly the same reason. They advocate statism as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How did Orwell's Big Brother put it? Freedom is Slavery?

In order, yes, yes, and if you can't figure it because you are not a conservative, you will never "enlightened." As old Ann used to write and say, arguing with liberals (or basically people taking the liberal side who don't even acknowledge the liberalism) is generally pointless.

Here is old Ann, pre-critiquing he current article -
"It’s the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it’s screwed up because there’s not enough government oversight (it’s the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of “reform.”"
Right? That's how she opens the article. Romney-care is the govt boondoggle that cures prior govt boondoggles.

Sorry, point of order! If you cannot refute Levin, you must admit he got it right and move on. I posted his response in lieu of my own. I know you might not like that idea, old Ann says, liberals... "act indignant if anyone uses the exact same argument they were using five minutes ago."

Point of common sense! Why isn't what old Ann said in the FOX interview I posted herein, not a refutation of new Ann's article. (Or any of 100 things old Ann wrote in her books).

BTW, all you people who say "Ann" is right, sound like the Demonic mob she wrote of. Conservatives don't have earthbound mortal "gods." Liberals do. In conservatism, as it points out in Demonic, is based on the application of concepts and principles, which are right or wrong by themselves, not based on who says them. If Ann wants to advocate for statism now, it doesn't become "right" because of her, any more than it would be right if Ted Kennedy or Obama or Karl Marx said the same thing.

You are now free to return to your Kool Aid.

Here's an article that goes through the positives and negatives in a pretty even handed manner.

http://www.heritage.org/research/lectur ... d-progress

Ann's right on almost everything she says in this article. She does her research before posting an article. The part I'd disagree with is that Commonwealth Care became viewed negatively when Obamacare was instituted. Really it became an issue when Romney's republican opponents, and Democrats both had something to gain by criticizing it. Then the truth got lost in a bunch of rhetoric.

A perfect example is the "mandate". Romney didn't support the "mandate", it was added to the bill by democrats in the legislature. He had a different solution in his bill. Do you know what it was? Have you done your research? He gets suck with supporting the mandate because he signed the bill, however there were 3 other plans being considered at the same time, all written by democrats, and Romney's plan beat them all out. So accepting the "mandate" was a small sacrifice for beating out the 3 other bills, one of which was a single-payer system.

The "mandate" was about $200 per year if I remember correctly, however when almost all the other republicans suggested a $2000 tax credit for people who buy insurance no conservatives got upset. To me the difference between losing a $200 tax exemption and losing a $2000 tax credit for not having insurance is $1800. So Romney's reluctant acceptance of a "mandate" was a "huge problem" but other "conservatives 10X bigger mandate was a "conservative solution". That's crazy.

This is all completely ignoring the big parts of the plan which were taking money from a government allotment to putting it toward helping people get their own insurance through private companies and making insurance plans portable so that it was picked by, and belonged to individuals, instead of companies.

In my opinion the second biggest political mistake republicans have made in the past decade was turning on a conservative solution to health care in order to win points in the primary. We may not have Obamacare if we didn't make that mistake.

I'll leave you with this quote from libertarian Barbara Anderson to show how "Romneycare" was viewed before it became an opportunity for republicans to score cheap political points.

Ann there is a lack of logic in your argument, which basically states that there are evils in a Federal mandate to purchase health insurance but not a state mandate.



Yes Ann, states do pass all sorts of laws that the Constitution doesn't directly tell them that they can't do.
However these laws can be taken to the Supreme Court (a Federal function) to have them declared unconstitutional.

Your example of militia age guns vis-a-vie health insurance was almost comical in its over reach.


Yes, Ann, what you described would be a monster.
Now take 50 much smaller monsters and look at their total. It would probably be a bigger monster.
State level Medicaid is not an example of how things should get done.


Ann, here I have a question.
Do you consider the same subsidy occurring at a Federal level to be unacceptable socialism, but not at a state level?
People who cannot afford medical care also in most cases, can not afford health insurance premiums.
I do not think that anybody would like to deny life-saving medical care to people if they can not afford it.
If there are state level subsidies for people to purchase insurance, and to re-imbuse hospitals, it requires state tax monies to pay for it.
The people still pay.

As Bruzilla has accurately pointed out, and which I am painfully aware of, the mandated health care plans do nothing to reduce the cost of medical care in this country.
It does nothing to reduce the cost of unnecessary tort law cases, which enrich lawyers.
It does nothing to reduce too high administrative costs.
It does nothing to reduce the excessive profits on pharmaceuticals, much of which is at the retail level.
It does nothing to reduce the corruption in the nursing home and hospice industry.

Increased competition by insurance companies across state lines would reduce premium costs.
With a combination of free enterprise, sacrificial giving and close monitoring of medical practices, there would be quite an improvement
without government running the show.

Ann, you stated that the federal government has made a mess of things.
That's true.
But it is also true that state governments can make quite a mess of things.
Is a state bureaucrat any less of a bureaucrat then a Federal bureaucrat?

In your argument Ann, you take a position that government should do it,
so long as it is state governments, not the Federal government.

I find that to be a specious argument.

Sorry.

So many falsehoods. So little time.

Ann says that no one is arguing the Constitution gives us an unalienable right not to by insurance.

Well, 26 Republican governors (not including the two that Ann's wants for President) are arguing to the Supreme Court right now, exactly that. Further, what a statist slip of the mind - to insert the insert the a idea that a Constitution ie man-made law, gives unalienable rights. The Creator endows us with unalienable rights. Remember when Obama kept leaving "endowed by their Creator" of out quoting the Declaration - as if rights are granted by government, by Constitutions, by men?


Romney in the 2008, "I like mandates."

Here is Romney in 2006, on the effective date of the bill, praising mandates as the "Republican way." He does not - as you say - attribute it to Democrats. It's not the people in general don't really know who the flip-flopping Romney is; the people who support don't know who he is.

Runs 27 seconds
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGuD0C3gpWg&feature=related[/youtube]

4 cheers for Donald Trump who is the businessman with a brain and a track record! He will endorse Newt Gingrich today at 12:30 p.m.
Chronicles 7:14

Wrong on the facts, specious reasoning...

so·cial·ism n.
1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

Romney-care does not provide the means to produce or distribute goods. Calling Ann's argument "a defense of socialism" is akin to the left characterizing conservatives as Nazi's. Using the word to characterize Ann's essay is provocative in purpose, and false on it's face.

Romney-care targeted only 8% of Massachusetts residents. Hardly a collective. Romney-care offered no government control of health-care. Nothing changed for the 92% who were already insured by private-sector competitive companies, other than they no longer had to subsidize those that could afford to pay.

Under Romney care, no one was forced to buy insurance. Those who wanted to pay for their own health care, had to show their ability to pay by posting a bond. Those who chose to do nothing, would have to pay a fine when they filed their taxes.

OBTW, Obama-care does force people to buy insurance, and establishes a new government collective, and further, is specifically designed to eventually create universal health care run by the government. Obama-care is socialism.

Nothing in Ann's essay defended socialism. Nor did she defend Romney-care as it is presently constituted. She noted the atrocious and costly changes implemented by Democrats over Romney's veto.

I have yet to hear anyone on this forum offer a plausible alternative...

I'm with this guy.
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer. ... are/354411



Only I would have used fewer words and simply asked. "Ann, are you *expletive deleted* shitting me?"

And yet you identified no wrong fact. OTOH, everyone of your topic sentences is false. For example, you say R-care doesn't "provide" the means. Statism, whether it is called socilaism or any other European "ism," is CONTROL of the means. You'd have to improve you points several hundred percent, before they could called "specious."

Romneycare in a nutshell.

The only thing new here, is that during my life, I have only heard socialists deny what socialism is - people like Obama - but the never claimed to be conservative.

You think this about me? Mistake.
The blowback has hardly begun. We'll see how much she is received at CPAC next week. Some are posting that they are trying to get her appearance cancelled.

Please, don't insult our intelligence and act like nothing extraordinary is happening.

What do we do about paying for those who are uninsured, who can't pay their bills, who wind up in our trauma unit's, or get cancer, or other life-threatening illnesses, or contagious diseases, who have astronomical medical bills, not to mention those who show up in the ER, looking for their next fix? What is the solution and what do these people cost the tax payer?

Which candidate's have offered a viable solution?

I'd answer the question, but first, I'd like ask you one. What do they do with people who can't pay the IRS? What do they do with people who can't pay their property taxes? What do they do with people who can't pay child support?

What do they do if someone shows up and gets $100,000 in treatment and can't pay? What do they do if someone shows and gets $200,000 in treatment, but the Romneycare reimbursement is only $100,000? Isn't the hospital out the same $100k, either way?

Maybe that will help lead you to an answer to your own question.

I will offer one - get the government out of health care entirely!

Our problems began when the government mandated that individuals must be treated w/o having to pay the bill. Everything that has followed is based on solving the problems created by the original government intrusion by creating even more problems.

I want off the plantation, I will take care of myself.

Really Miss Coulter? You're going to use appeals to authority?

Logical fallacies abound....

Tell ya what - let's go ahead and nominate Romney. That way, no one will care who gets to be President. I predict the smallest voter turnout in America's history!

Look at the time frame. Hillarycare was dead and buried 10 years before Romneycare was passed. You're just making things up. You're not on the Gingrich campaign staff are you?

Levin calls people dopes all the time. I'm simply returning the favor.

Not really Ray Gun.

I'm not a fan of Romneycare, but looking for solutions and what candidates are offering as a plan for this real health care crisis.

Garnish wages, bank accounts, take personal property, put deadbeat dad's in Jail? What if these people don't have bank accounts, personal property, jobs and are Illegal?

Keep them in jail at our expense and still provide them health care? $ $

Irony Alert!
http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/ ... ne-in-2016

So you could make the same argument that no one is forced to purchase insurance under Obamacare... except for the fine.

Really... I love Ann immensely, but to see these syncophants defending this weakest of cases she makes is pretty amazing.

Ann, I love you, but I think you are going overboard on defending your decision to support Romney. Just because a law is a state program and not a federal one does not mean that the law is good. Romneycare and Obamacare are one and the same when you compare them side by side. I like a lot about Romney but his background is too liberal for me. I am concerned he won't make the tough decisions needed to turn this country back toward what makes it great.