Subject: RomneyCare
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Alexander Snyder-Mackler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:39:22 -0500

See below Romney quote from tonight about his healthcare plan and analysis of why it sounds exactly like Obama's explanation of the ACA. 

"I didn't say I'm in favor of top-down, government-run health care. 92 percent of the people in my state had insurance before our plan went in place and nothing changes for them. They have the same private insurance they had before. And for the 8 percent of people who didn't have insurance, we said to them, if you can afford it, buy it yourself, any one of the plans out there, choose any plan. There's no government plan. And if you don't want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill."
That is almost precisely the way Obama has described "Obamacare." Romney did touch on an authentic difference, pointing out that the Affordable Care Act impacted Medicare. As Romney said, "We didn't, of course, touch anything like that." But that wasn't a matter of choice -- as a governor, Romney couldn't make those sorts of adjustments.

Santorum could have spiked the ball quicker and harder than he did, but he eventually made his way around to saying, "Your mandate is no different than Barack Obama's mandate. It is the same mandate."

But the similarity between the way Romney described his plan and the way the White House talks about the Affordable Care Act is so strikingly similar that Romney's response in this debate would be fodder for a pretty great attack ad.

Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

Sent from my iPhone