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Politico: 'Romneycare,' meet 'Obamacare'
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It’s something supporters of President Barack Obama’s health reform law will say again and again: The health care overhaul put into place in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney is the big (but smaller) sister of the federal law. His rivals for the Republican presidential nomination like to say it, too.
But that doesn’t mean Romney’s law gets to stay just like it was just because it got there first. It still has to conform to the federal law, and that won’t exactly be an easy lift.
That’s right — even “Romneycare” can’t escape “Obamacare.”
States have until 2014 to set up their exchanges; that’s when the law fully kicks in. Massachusetts already has many key pieces of the law in place: a fully functioning exchange, an individual mandate, a ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and tax subsidies to help people pay for insurance. And yes, the state law was the model for national reform.
