Mitt Romney Takes Aim at Obama on Health Care

Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, one of the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, looked to downplay his own record on health-care legislation and called for repeal of the federal health-care law backed by President Barack Obama. During Romneys term as governor of the Bay State, he signed a health-care law mandating that state residents have insurance.

Romney wrote a column in USA Today in which he promised, if elected, he would repeal the federal law as one of his first actions.

I believe the better course is to empower the states to determine their own health care futures, maintained Romney. Unfortunately, with the passage of Obamacare last year, the president and the Congress took a wrong turn. Obamacare will lead to more spending, greater federal involvement in health care and negative effects on U.S. economic activity. The president definitely forgot the admonition to do no harm.

My plan is to harness the power of markets to drive positive change in health insurance and health care, added Romney. And we can do so with state flexibility (unlike Obamacare's top-down federal approach), no new taxes (as opposed to hundreds of billions of dollars of new taxes under Obamacare), and better consumer choice (as opposed to bureaucratic, government choice under Obamacare). This change of direction offers our best hope of preserving both innovation and value.

"If I am elected president, I will issue on my first day in office an executive order paving the way for waivers from Obamacare for all 50 states, continued Romney. "Subsequently, I will call on Congress to fully repeal Obamacare