WASHINGTON -- Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized Barack Obama on Sunday for the broken promise that Obama's landmark health care reform law would not cause anyone to lose their existing insurance policies.
"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace asked Romney what bothered him the most about the troubled rollout of Obamacare in the past year.
"It's not just that the president tells people that they have to buy health insurance, it's that he tells them what health insurance they have to buy," Romney said. "The idea that the government knows better than the American people what kind of insurance they have to have makes no sense. That is something which I think the American people are rejecting in large numbers."
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney oversaw a health care overhaul that served as a prototype for the Affordable Care Act. The ACA requires Americans to buy insurance, but allows them to select from different tiers of plans from different providers. Wallace asked, "Didn't you, in effect, tell uninsured, 'Here's what you have to buy?'"
"Well, actually, one of the things I vetoed in the health legislation at our state was that very provision," Romney said.
In 2006, then-Gov. Romney vetoed several provisions of the state's just-passed health care law, only to have the vetoes overridden by the legislature. It's unclear which specific veto Romney was referencing.
"I don't like the idea that the government tells people they have to have a gold-plated health insurance policy, if they want something that's more specific to their needs," Romney continued. "The idea that a 70-year-old has to have birth control provisions or that they have to have maternity coverage are kind of things that people ought to be able to select on their own, and this is at the heart of the president's deception and dishonesty with regards to Obamacare."
Romney has previously criticized Obama's health care law for its initial requirement that church-affiliated employers pay for birth control coverage, though as governor, Romney did not try to undo a state law with essentially the same requirement.
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