Romney: I’d Repeal Obamacare as President

Mitt Romney, a likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has taken a lot of heat from other Republicans for the healthcare reform he pushed through as governor of Massachusetts. But he said over the weekend in a speech to New Hampshire Republicans that he wants to repeal the new federal healthcare law, The Hill reports.

"I would repeal Obamacare" if elected president, he said, according to The Boston Globe. "My experience has taught me that the states are the place where healthcare programs for the uninsured should be crafted, just as the Constitution provides. Obamacare is bad law constitutionally, it’s bad policy, it’s bad for American families. And that’s one reason why President Obama will be a one-term president.”

Meanwhile, prominent Republicans in New Hampshire tell Politico that Romneycare won’t help him in the New Hampshire primary but won’t prove fatal either. They don’t like that his reform plan in Massachusetts included an individual mandate requiring medical coverage. But they’re attracted to his strong pledge to repeal Obamacare and his support for states’ rights.

“He can absolutely get past this,” John Stephen, the Republican gubernatorial nominee who narrowly lost last year, told Politico. “When you’re a governor, you need to do what’s best for your state. And what Governor Romney said he believed in was state flexibility [and] 10th Amendment principles. I think that’s a great start. He will just have to continue to expand on that.”

In his speech Romney admitted that his healthcare reform “wasn’t perfect,” but differed greatly from Obamacare because it didn’t require any other state to follow suit.