As promised, here’s more on the Mitt-Hillary connection, from my National Review Online article:
The fact that a prominent Republican such as Mitt Romney has now embraced Hillary-style government planning strikes [The New Republic’s Jonathan] Cohn as confirmation that Sen. Clinton was on the right track.
By bundling the tax dollars of six million Massachusetts residents, Mitt Romney may have made the largest contribution yet to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Cohn is not even referring to some obscure aspect of RomneyCare that was forced down Romney’s throat by a left-wing legislature — which is how Romney’s defenders have tried to explain away parts of the plan, such as the individual mandate, that are unpopular with conservatives. According to Cohn, the aspect of RomneyCare that most resembles HillaryCare is its very centerpiece, which Romney borrowed from the conservative Heritage Foundation: the health insurance “Connector.”
Cohn is essentially correct. The objective of the “Connector” bureaucracy, as described by Heritage Foundation scholars, reads like an exercise in government planning. The “Connector” is supposed to “reorganize[e]…a large part of the state’s private insurance system into a ‘single market’ structure with uniform rules and a central ‘clearinghouse’ for administering coverage.”
Here’s a question I’d like to hear Mitt Romney answer in tonight’s debate:
Governor, observers are noting that the centerpiece of the health care reform you enacted in Massachusetts is strikingly similar to the plan that Hillary Clinton championed in 1993–1994. They say that your plan is evidence that Ms. Clinton was on the right track. How do you respond?
