Mitt Romney supported Federal Mandate in Wyden-Bennet

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Made popular 443 days ago in World News

weeklystandard.com — on July 30, 2009 — just days before the start of the August recess that quickly became the August uprising against Obamacare. In his op-ed, Romney seems to encourage President Obama to move in a slower and more bipartisan manner, to abandon his planned government-run “public option” (which, under constituent pressure, the Democrats eventually did scrap), to use Romney’s Massachusetts health care overhaul as something of a model, and (as a way to keep Obamacare’s costs down) to include a federal mandate. Romney wrote:

“Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America’s families to be larded up and rushed through [Congress] on an artificial deadline. There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it.

“No other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured as Massachusetts….Shortly after becoming governor, I worked in a bipartisan fashion with Democrats to insure all our citizens….For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.

“Massachusetts also proved that you don’t need government insurance. Our citizens purchase private...insurance. There is no ‘public option.’…