Mitt Romney has made a surprising comment about Obamacare

“Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare”, Romney said.

In public, Romney has always sought to distinguish his work in Massachusetts from the Affordable Care Act, which many health experts say draws upon policy innovations developed while he was governor. “So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance”. Today, while remarking on the passing of an old friend, Mitt Romney inadvertently admitted a simple truth that amounts to Republican heresy these days – Romneycare is the foundation of Obamacare.

Mitt Romney on Friday reversed years of trying to distinguish Obamacare from the universal health care law he signed as governor of Massachusetts, acknowledging that it paved the way for President Barack Obama’s signature law. When President Obama argued that the two were similar at an October 2012 debate, Romney pushed backed strongly… Without Romneycare, I dont think we would have Obamacare. Virtually all of the GOP’s gloomdoggling predictions of Obamacare failure have proven to be epically, comically, wrong. While that is also a crux of the Affordable Care Act, the former Republican nominee has repeatedly dismissed the comparison by suggesting his law was never meant to be applied nationwide. Then he said the opposite. The similarities between the Massachusetts and the federal laws even prompted one of Romney’s primary rivals to coin the term “Obamneycare”.

Romney’s critics have noted both laws included the so-called individual mandate, a requirement that people obtain health insurance or be penalized. Exit question: Now that Romney’s come clean, can we get Rubio to admit that the Gang of Eight bill really was amnesty?

UPDATE (3:11 p.m.): Romney responded on social media after outlets began to report on his comments.

Romney wrote that “getting people health insurance is a good thing”, which he followed with a few dubious criticisms of the ACA. To my mind, his online clarification changes very little about the substance of the story.