Mitt: Proud of ‘RomneyCare’

Mitt Romney rejected Mike Huckabee’s call for him to admit that the “RomneyCare” health care program failed, instead saying he’s “proud” of “getting everyone covered” when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“Mitt Romney is proud of what he accomplished for Massachusetts in getting everyone covered,” Romney’s spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, told the Boston Globe, in the first direct response Team Mitt made to Huckabee’s criticism of the health plan in his new book.

Fehrnstrom also put daylight between the Romney health care bill and President Obama’s reform package, which is unpopular among voters and is the subject of several lawsuits by different states.

“What’s important now is to return to the states the power to determine their own healthcare solutions by repealing Obamacare,” Fehrnstrom added. “A one-size-fits-all plan for the entire nation just doesn’t work.”

The comments came after POLITICO reported that a chapter in Huckabee’s new book, “A Simple Government,” devotes two full pages to trashing RomneyCare and tethering it tightly to ObamaCare.

“Ever since the debate over (the national) program began, it’s been compared to RomneyCare, the failed statewide health-care program implemented by none other than my fellow GOP member Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts,” Huckabee says in the book.

“Any critical assessment of this program will show that it failed … and yet the Obama administration decided to emulate it in its pursuit of a national health-care program.”

In an interview Wednesday evening with the Associated Press, Huckabee tossed up a prescription for how Romney ought to deal with the issue.

“I think it’s not a killer for him,” Huckabee said. “But he has to say either ‘I love it,’ ‘I hate it,’ or, ‘Hey I tried it, it didn’t work and that’s why I would say to you, let’s not do it nationally.'”

“The position he should take is to say: ‘Look, the reason Obamacare won’t work is because we’ve tried it at the state level and we know it won’t work,'” Huckabee added.

That’s a bit different than what Romney’s camp said – and than what the former Massachusetts pol says in the paperback edition of his own book, “No Apology” – which is that he feels it was a net positive for his state, but that works at the state level doesn’t work nationally.

The health care issue is one that Republicans, even Romney boosters, acknowledge is a hurdle for him, especially in conservative-tilting early primary and caucus states.

{Capitol News Company, LLC/Matzav.com Newscenter}