Haunted by RomneyCare

EDITORIAL | Joan Vennochi

October 19, 2011|By Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist

Rick Perry: (associated press )

ROMNEYCARE REMAINS a very painful topic for Mitt Romney.

His rivals battered him with relish when the Massachusetts health care law came up during last night’s Republican presidential debate. Rick Santorum started it, with an attack on Romney’s credibility regarding his pledge to repeal ObamaCare. Romney, he said, had no track record “that we can trust you that you’re gonna do that.’’ Expanding access, while failing to control costs, blew “a hole in the budget’’ in Massachusetts, added Santorum.

Newt Gingrich picked up the line of attack, calling the mandatory coverage that Romney signed into law as governor in 2006 “one more big government bureaucracy.’’

Romney’s defense - that the people of Massachusetts like their health-reform law - did not silence his critics, who mocked the Bay State as the only place that would favor such a plan.

This is the first debate where Romney had trouble brushing off the fire from rivals. He got a little shrill and a little excitable when Santorum and then Rick Perry started talking over him. It’s possible a few hairs even moved on the usually unruffled Romney scalp. But he held his own against the attacks.

Yet when the subject is health care, being able to out-debate his rivals isn’t the issue for Romney. In Republican primary land, the problem is a state law that is making headlines as an incubator for rising health costs that, pre-reform, were already the highest in the nation.

Romney argues that he knows how to get health care costs down. But as Santorum quickly noted, “you didn’t do it’’ in Massachusetts. And as Santorum also pointed out, Romney has at times suggested that what he did in Massachusetts is a good model for the nation.

Of course, that was when he thought it would help his presidential prospects. Now, conservatives consider ObamaCare a curse word. And RomneyCare is its precursor.

Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com.