Friday, June 3, 2011

Mitt Romney’s Campaign Website Omits Health Care Reform Accomplishment From Bio

The 695-word biography on Mitt Romney’s campaign website highlights the former governor’s business experience, his success in “salvag[ing] the 2002 Winter Olympic Games from certain disaster,” and stabilizing the state economy. But it doesn’t devote a single word to his greatest accomplishment as governor: enacting comprehensive universal health care reform in Massachusetts.

The glaring omission seems to undermine Romney’s latest effort to honestly address the issue and explain his continued support for the law. As Romney himself pointed out, more than 98 percent of Massachusetts residents now have health care coverage, including 99.8 percent of children — the highest in the nation — and the state is now spending less on uncompensated care.

But Romney — who announced just yesterday that he is officially running for president — has also downplayed his role in enacting what he once referred to as the “ultimate conservative plan,” eschewing health care reform in his CPAC address and changing the second edition of his memoirs to downplay his belief that Massachusetts’ success could be exported to the nation.

This new, somewhat ambivalent tone toward reform contrasts sharply with how Romney characterized the law five years ago, when he presented the measure as a bipartisan accomplishment that could, at least in part, serve as a model for the nation.

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