G.O.P. Stands on Health Mask Records as Governors

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The three most prominent current or former governors running for president — Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr. — are firmly united in their commitment to repealing President Obama’s health care law. But that unanimity masks a broad divergence in their approaches to the issue while in office, spanning the spectrum of Republican positioning.

The place of health care in the Republican primaries will necessarily be defined by Mr. Romney’s skill at neutralizing criticism of his landmark Massachusetts experiment and its paternity of “Obamacare,” as opponents have dubbed the law. But each of the governors has vulnerabilities, and they have sought thus far to credential themselves less by their own past records than by their current opposition to what is officially known as the Affordable Care Act.

“They are more focused on expressing that view than showing how their health care records as governor reveal what they would do as president,” said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy.

The politics of the primaries have made toxic any consideration of once-conservative concepts like health insurance mandates and marketplace exchanges, because of their association with Mr. Obama’s plan. But in a different day and environment, Mr. Romney in Massachusetts and Mr. Huntsman in Utah embraced those very devices as state solutions, to differing degrees.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/us/politics/04governors.html?pagewanted=all