“I was hoping I’d get that question,’’ Romney joked before launching into the reasons he backed the state efforts to vastly extend health care coverage when he was governor. Massachusetts, he contended, had to do something to control rising health care costs and persuade residents to buy insurance rather than go to emergency rooms for care.
“In my state, we were spending hundreds of millions of dollars giving out free care to people who could take care of themselves,’’ Romney said.
“Some parts of that experiment worked, some parts didn’t, some parts I’d change,’’ Romney said.
But as he defended the state plan, he again called for repeal of Obama’s national overhaul, saying it unfairly mandates a one-size-fits-all system on each state.
Romney joined four other prospective GOP candidates — former governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and businessman Herman Cain — at the forum held to discuss economic issues and budget priorities.
Romney stumbled slightly over his response to one question. Echoing Ronald Reagan’s use of a “Misery Index’’ to criticize Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, Romney talked about an “Obama Misery Index.’’
“We’re going to have to hang the Obama misery index around his neck,’’ he said. “The fact that you’ve got people in this country really squeezed — with gasoline getting so expensive, commodities getting so expensive; families are having a hard time making ends meet… . We’re going to hang him with that, uh, so to speak, metaphorically. You have to be careful these days, I’ve learned that.’’
It was not the first stutter of the campaign this week for Romney. In an op-ed column Monday that criticized the president’s financial priorities, Romney asserted that Obama had engaged “in one of the biggest peace-time spending binges in American history.’’
