Flashback: Romney Encouraged Obama to Use the Individual Mandate on the National Level

Mitt Romney made the case for an individual mandate in a 2009 editorial for USA Today, and archived on his former campaign website.

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar.

You can read the piece and see that elsewhere Romney called on Obama to “jettison his left-wing ideology” and abandon the notion of a public option. All to the good. But that section above is very clear in supporting the use of tax penalties to eliminate the “free rider” issue. That’s a national individual mandate. Erick Erickson has more.