Previous Page | Print this Document

Romney's Faneuil Hall signing ceremony capped a national media rollout for candidate Romney. He won over radio kingmaker Don Imus with a St. Patrick's Day appearance. He pitched the health care bill on the oped page of the Wall Street Journal. In a Newsweek column headlined "A Rising Star, Out of the Blue," Jonathan Alter makes it sound like this bill was a Romney production, start to finish.

"While rivals Bill Frist and John McCain fumed over the collapse of the immigration bill in the Senate, Romney made solving thorny problems look easy," Alter writes, quoting Romney as boasting that "this shows that Republicans and Democrats can work together to get things done."

Those who have watched the health bill advance on Beacon Hill might paint a different picture. Yes, Romney engaged the issue, had his staff work up a proposal and kept talking about it. But then the Democrats in the Legislature went to work. Senate President Robert Travaglini came up with a bill. House Speaker Sal DiMasi came up with a very different bill. When the bills collided in conference committee, a months-long deadlock was broken by leaders of Partners Healthcare, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the Mass. Taxpayers Foundation.

If Romney was pushing this process along, it wasn't visible. The most powerful motivator may have been the federal officials threatening to withhold $385 million in Medicaid funds if the state didn't come with a plan to expand coverage.

Romney seemed to be watching from the sidelines, holding his veto pen tightly, until the deal was done. Then, as the Bay State's groundbreaking reforms became national news, Romney jumped into the middle of the field to join the celebration.

In truth, there were lots of hands on this legislation. Health care activists have been pushing for reform for years, and are still threatening to put universal coverage on the November ballot. A small army of lobbyists have pushed it along. Rep. Pat Walrath, D-Stow, and Sen. Richard Moore, D-Uxbridge, co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, made the numbers work. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who has made health reform his personal cause for 40 years, worked tirelessly behind the scenes.

Romney played a part as well, though his veto of one of the key elements of the compromise, a $295 assessment on employers who don't provide health insurance, repudiates the compromise that made passage possible. That veto, sure to be overridden, was aimed at GOP presidential primary voters, not the people of Massachusetts.

But if Romney's role in writing this law is limited, his responsibility for making it work isn't. The law leaves many questions unanswered, in particular the cost and coverage of discount insurance policies it authorizes and the size of subsidies intended to make them affordable. Romney's administration must make the program work -- and get federal authorities to sign off on it and deliver the threatened Medicaid millions.

We can't blame Romney for taking credit for this new law. After two years in which he mostly positioned himself against a Legislature he couldn't influence, Romney learned a skill used successfully by one of his Republican predecessors, Bill Weld: How to march in front of a reform parade organized by Democrats.

Making the law succeed, however, will test the executive skills for which Romney is best known. How he does will determine whether he's bragging about health care reform on the presidential campaign trail two years from now, or running away from it.

Previous Page | Print this Document