Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney issued a statement Wednesday criticizing the “frustrating embarrassment” that has been the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, hours before a Boston visit by President Barack Obama who will tout the former Massachusetts governor’s health law as reason to hope its national reincarnation still has a chance.
Romney noted the federal health exchange website, healthcare.gov, which has been plagued by significant issues for nearly a month since its launch, and the growing reports of consumers who have recieved cancellation notices for their individual market health plans.
“In the years since the Massachusetts health care law went into effect nothing has changed my view that a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country,” Romney said in a statement. “Beyond that, had President Obama actually learned the lessons of Massachusetts health care, millions of Americans would not lose the insurance they were promised they could keep, millions more would not see their premiums skyrocket, and the installation of the program would not have been a frustrating embarrassment.”
He added: “Health reform is best crafted by states with bipartisan support and input from its employers, as we did, without raising taxes, and by carefully phasing it in to avoid the type of disruptions we are seeing nationally.”
Obama will deliver a speech at the historic Faneuil Hall, where Romney signed the state’s successful health program into law in 2006, with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) at his side.
