Yesterday, Former Governor of Massachusetts and potential Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney wrote the following op ed post for nationalreviewonline.com:

If I Were President: Obamacare, One Year In

March 22, 2011 8:20 P.M. By Mitt Romney

If I were president, on Day One I would issue an executive order paving the way for Obamacare waivers to all 50 states. The executive order would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and all relevant federal officials to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health-care solutions that work best for them.

As I have stated time and again, a one-size-fits-all national plan that raises taxes is simply not the answer. Under our federalist system, the states are “laboratories of democracy.” They should be free to experiment. By the way, what works in one state may not be the answer for another. Of course, the ultimate goal is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with free-market reforms that promote competition and lower health-care costs. But since an outright repeal would take time, an executive order is the first step in returning power to the states.

Back in 2006, Romney was singing a different tune as he signed a massive health-insurance overhaul into law as Governor of Massachusetts. “Romneycare” was packed with subsidies, exchanges, and mandates to extend coverage to the uninsured. Four years later, it became the model for the national nightmare known as Obamacare.

David Boaz, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute once said:

As President Obama himself has pointed out, Romney is the guy who created the prototype for Obamacare. How can he lead the charge against a health-care plan that is modeled on his own?

Appearing at a Lincoln Day dinner in the early voting state of New Hampshire on Saturday, March 5th, Romney spoke on what he perceives as the difference between the passage of Romneycare and his pre-campaign promise to repeal Obamacare if he is elected president.

Romney proclaimed:

Our approach was a state plan intended to address problems that were in many ways unique to Massachusetts.

Our experiment wasn’t perfect-some things worked, some didn’t, and some things I’d change. One thing I would never do is to usurp the constitutional power of states with a one-size-fits-all federal takeover.

I would repeal Obamacare, if I were ever in a position to do so. My experience has taught me that states are where health care programs for the uninsured should be crafted, just as the Constitution provides. Obamacare is bad law, bad policy, and it is bad for America’s families.

So, what is the truth concerning Romneycare?  Well, according to this article, posted on wsj (Wall Street Journal).com on January 21st, 2010:

Using the Census Bureau’s current population survey, University of Kentucky economist Aaron Yelowitz and Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute studied RomneyCare between 2005 and 2008—that is, two years on either side of its passage. The share of uninsured residents did fall to 5.4% in 2008 from 9.8% in 2005 (though the authors argue this reduction is overstated).

But Messrs. Yelowitz and Cannon show that most of the new coverage was concentrated among people earning under 300% of the federal poverty level, or about $66,000 for a family of four. Those happen to be the same people who qualify for subsidies in the heavily regulated insurance “connector,” the prototype for the “exchanges” that Democrats were contemplating before Mr. [Senator-Elect Scott] Brown so rudely interrupted.

Coverage for adults in this group increased by 14.2 percentage points—which merely proves that “universal” coverage isn’t much of a problem if health care is cheap for consumers. But another way of thinking about it is that the subsidies amount to a taxpayer-funded insurance discount. The same increase in coverage might be achievable if health care were less expensive. But rather than deregulate and reform the private market to lower costs, Mr. Romney and Democrats defaulted to the same public transfer payments that define ObamaCare.

…Meanwhile, although Mr. Romney promised that his plan would lower costs, the liberal Commonwealth Fund reports that Massachusetts insurance costs have climbed anywhere from 21% to 46% faster than the U.S. average since 2005. Employer-sponsored premiums are now the highest in the nation.

Let’s go a step further.  In 2008, in a debate in New Hampshire, Romney said:

I like mandates…The mandate works.

He was speaking about the individual mandate in Romneycare requiring the purchase of health insurance by every citizen of Massachusetts.

Sound familiar?

According to a survey by the state Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, 98 percent of Massachusetts residents had health insurance in 2010; a March 2011 report issued by Gallup put the figure close to 95 percent. However, that did not happen without a cost.  An analysis from the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation found that state spending on health care reform grew from $1.04 billion in 2006 to about $1.75billion in 2010.

This hypocritical argument from Governor Romney appears, at present, to be ringing hollow with potential Republican voters.

Hopefully, the GOP will realize For Whom the Bell Tolls.