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Romney: 'Gifts' in Obama's healthcare law helped him win
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11/14/12 06:47 PM ET
Mitt Romney suggested Wednesday that President Obama won a second term largely because of policies in his healthcare law.
In comments to a group of donors, Romney said he lost in part because of the "gifts" Obama had given to certain demographic groups — and a lot of the specific gifts he mentioned came in the form of healthcare benefits.
“You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge. Likewise with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus," Romney said, according to the New York Times.
"Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people," he reportedly said.
Romney pledged throughout the campaign to repeal "ObamaCare," and he specifically attacked the law's contraception mandate.
His suggestion that health care was a major boon to Obama's campaign is somewhat at odds with conventional political wisdom. The public had an unfavorable view of the health law before the election, although polls also showed that voters liked individual policies when they were described outside the context of the larger Affordable Care Act.
— This post was updated at 6:02 p.m.
