USA Today again aired Romney attacks on Clinton health plan without noting he signed a bill with similar requirements

Written by Ryan Chiachiere

Published

In a September 24 USA Today article, reporter Fredreka Schouten quoted Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's charge that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) health care proposal is “a 'socialized medical plan' ” without noting that, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney signed into law a health care bill that requires every state resident to obtain health insurance -- one of the central tenets of Clinton's plan. From the article:

Republicans, who have rejected proposals for universal health care, last week criticized Clinton's approach. [Former] Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, for instance, called it a “socialized medical plan.” On Sunday, Clinton hit back, saying, “I'm waiting for any Republican candidate to come out with a plan that can be really scrutinized.”

As Media Matters for America has noted, in a September 18 article -- noting Romney's criticisms of Clinton's proposal -- The Boston Globe reported that “the central premise of Clinton's plan -- an 'individual mandate' requiring that every American have health insurance -- is precisely what Romney proposed in the Bay State, in what was seen as a bold approach to attaining universal coverage.” The Globe also noted that one of the “few differences between Clinton's plan and the law Romney signed” is that Clinton's plan “does not open any new government agency, according to the campaign, unlike the Massachusetts law, which created the Health Connector to help uninsured people obtain insurance.”

The USA Today article follows several instances (here, here, and here) in which the media quote Romney's attacks on Clinton's plan without noting his role in the passage of the Massachusetts plan. On September 18, USA Today's Richard Wolf had similarly reported:

Republicans criticized Clinton's plan as heavy-handed. Rudy Giuliani's campaign called it the “Clinton-Moore plan” after filmmaker Michael Moore, whose film Sicko lambastes the U.S. health care system and lauds government-run programs in other countries. Mitt Romney called it “a European-style socialized medicine plan.”