Rand Paul's Take on Health Care: Not Mitt Romnney's

Rand Paul criticizes Mitt Romney over health care

With promises to repeal Obamacare almost-certainly to be at the top of the Republican agenda in the 2012 Presidential election, it's only natural that Republicans will take aim at one another over the health care issue.

There are very few serious-thinking Americans who don't agree that American health care needs a very substantial fix. Consensus seems to remain that Obamacare is not the answer to the United States' health care woes. For Rand Paul, the answer isn't Mitt Romney's solution, either.

"Romneycare was such a bad model for 'Obamacare,'" Paul declared. "Once you allow that the state is going to mandate and decide what insurance has to sell, it really is such an anathema to capitalism and to freedom and individual liberty, that I don't know how a good solid Republican conservative could sign a piece of legislation like that."

"It's a horrific piece of legislation that presaged what we got from 'Obamacare,'" he concluded.

It's by no means a new issue for Romney. Romney signed the "Romneycare" bill -- passed by Democrats in the Massachusetts state congress -- in 2006.

For each of the following five years, Massachusetts has had the fastest-growing health care costs in the United States. In other words, they're out of control.

Even worse, although only 2.6% of Massachusett's citizens have been left uncovered under the Romney health care bill, a whopping 13% aren't receiving even basic health care. Massachusetts leads the United States in postponed procedures and unfilled prescriptions.

The co-payments on medical procedures under many health insurance policies in Massachusetts have proven financially crippling for many citizens.

In terms of treating Masschusetts as a policy laboratory for health care fixes, it seems clear that Romneycare has failed, and taht Obamacare will almost-certainly follow it into that morass.

Rand Paul -- whose father Ron has done everything but officially announce his candidacy for President -- intends to dog Romney with this record leading up to the start of 2012 primaries.

It doesn't answer the ever-important question of what Rand Paul himself -- or, more importantly, what his father -- would do to fix health care in the United States, but at least it paints a good picture of how not to fix it.