after Obama embraces them

Lee Fang does the legwork on the Heritage Foundation’s disdain for ObamaCare provisions they supported in RomneyCare:

– Heritage On Romney’s Individual Mandate: “Not an unreasonable position, and one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]

– Heritage On President Obama’s Individual Mandate: “Both unprecedented and unconstitutional.” [Heritage, 12/9/09]

– Heritage On Romney’s Insurance Exchange: An “innovative mechanism to promote real consumer choice.” [Heritage, 4/20/06]

– Heritage On President Obama’s Insurance Exchange: Creates a “de facto public option” by “grow[ing]” government control over healthcare.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]

– Heritage On Romney’s Medicaid Expansion: Reduced “the total cost to taxpayers” by taking people out of the “uncompensated care pool.” [Heritage, 1/28/06]

– Heritage On President Obama’s Medicaid Expansion: Expands a “broken entitlement program,” providing a “low-quality, poorly functioning program.” [Heritage, 3/30/10]

What’s more is that Heritage crafted these ideas in a 2003 report called “Laying the Groundwork for Universal Health Care Coverage.” The theory was to use government subsidies and an individual mandate — coupled with exchanges to pool risk — to expand coverage.

Both Romney and now Obama used this exact approach in their health laws (and as I wrote in The Guardian yesterday, Romney is having a hard time distinguishing the two bills.)

Heritage claims to be a “nonpartisan” outlet to “promote conservative public policies.” But its hard to look at this and conclude that it’s anything but a partisan apparatus whose primary goal is GOP electoral victory.

This is the same organization which this week decided that Obama has downgraded America from a “free” to a “mostly free” country, and is preparing to launch a new political arm to target Democrats.