Yesterday, Mitt Romney was on Fox News Sunday and was asked about the similarities between the health care reform passed when Romney was governor of Massachusetts and the Obama plan pending in Congress.

This is interesting for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that that is an awful lot in common between the Mass. program and the current health care package in the Congress.  Romney hopes to be the GOP nominee to face Obama in 2012, and yet the GOP base despises the current health care reform proposal.

Romney attempted to differentiate the plans in a variety of ways, but it boiled down to two basic points:  an argument based on federalism and one based on teaxation.

ROMNEY:   […]  Let me tell you, there’s a big difference between what we did and what President Obama is doing. What we did, I think, is the ultimate conservative plan. We said people have to take responsibility for getting insurance, if they can afford it, or paying their own way. No more free- riders. And we solved this at the state level — not a federal plan, but a state plan.

This is a federalist nation. States should be able to solve their own problems. We didn’t raise taxes. We did not at the same time cut Medicare and expect our seniors to have to pay for all this. We didn’t do what President Obama’s doing, which is putting controls on our system of premiums for private insurance companies.

Now, I think that Romney can get some cover with the base by making the federalism argument, but it is fairly thin cover, as with the same breath with his “ultimate conservative plan” with “people having to take responsibility for getting insurance” is  the foundation for universality in the Obama plan, i.e., an individual mandate that all citizens buy insurance, with penalties assessed is insurance is not purchased.  There are also subsidies for those who cannot afford coverage (again, like the plan in the Congress).

Again, the federalism argument with have some sway, insofar as he can argue that it is one thing for a state to behave this way (in terms of scope and power, etc.) and yet another for the federal government.  However, in terms of seriously vigorous intellectual argument, it strikes me as eliding the substantial similarities in the basic policy architecture of the two programs.

He may also have a fig leaf to use in regards to taxes, although the overall question of costs and funding are likely to remain a vulnerability.

None of this is an argument for or against the program, but highlights Romney’s political problems with the issue.

He also the following in that same answer:

And let me just tell you, I think our plan is working well. And perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it is saving lives. It is the ultimate pro-life effort, if you will, because people who otherwise could have lost their lives are now able to get the kind of care that they deserve.

This is interesting to me for two reasons.  First, Romney clearly is trying to burnish his pro-life bona fides, which are his Achilles’ heel.  Second, it is an argument, which modification, that could be adopted by the Democrats.  Indeed, one could argue that Romney is getting perilously close (from a political POV) to arguing here that a)  lack of health care leads to premature death in the US and therefore, b) health care should be considered a right not a privilege.

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