A news article in today’s Washington Post — about which Michael Tanner also blogs here — notes the similarities between (1) the 1993 Clinton health plan, (2) the Mitt Romney-Heritage Foundation plan that Massachusetts enacted last year, and (3) the health plans of the leading Democratic presidential candidates:

To move toward universal coverage, [Senators] Edwards, Clinton and Obama have approaches that borrow from the Massachusetts model. That plan, regarded as one of the nation’s most innovative, took key elements of the 1993 Clinton plan and made them practical politically — so practical that the plan was enacted in 2006 by a Democratic legislature with support from a Republican governor, 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney…

All three Democrats support a provision similar to another part of the Massachusetts plan that would require businesses either to offer insurance to their employees or pay a tax. Fourteen years ago, a similar proposal helped drive opposition to Bill Clinton’s heath-care plan…

Republican presidential candidates, wary of large plans that call for tax increases, have depicted the Democratic proposals as “socialized medicine.” Romney is among them, even though the law he signed as governor of Massachusetts has been a model for Clinton, Edwards and Obama…

When Edwards released his plan in February, [bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel] blasted it in an e‑mail to one of the candidate’s aides, saying it was hard to figure out why someone seeking the Democratic nomination was backing a health-care approach crafted by Romney, a Republican.

Oh, I don’t think it’s that hard to figure out.

The Cato Institute was the first to note the similarities between RomneyCare and the 1993 Clinton health plan. The New Republic ($) and The Washington Post soon followed.

I wonder who will be next?