This isn't going to help the Mittster:
Jon Kingsdale, the executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the state agency that helps people in Massachusetts find health insurance, is leaving his job, Gov. Deval Patrick has announced.
The governor’s office is not saying where Kingsdale is headed, but it was announced that Glen Shor, the assistant secretary for health care policy in the state’s Executive Office for Administration and Finance, is taking his place.
Connector spokesman Dick Powers said that Kingsdale, who has not accepted a new job, will be “exploring opportunities to help with national health care reform.”
So not only is Mitt Romney's health care plan the model for President Obama's Death Of Freedom Plan, now Obama is hiring Romney's director to help run it. The American Spectator's Philip Klein comments:
As it is, Romney has struggled to draw meaningful distinctions between his plan and Obama's. But if Obama were to snap up Kingsdale to work on implementing the federal health care law, it would make Romney's task even more difficult. Imagine a debate in which Romney tries to attack the national health care law. Obama could respond, "Not only are the two plans quite similar, but I appointed the same man who Romney himself appointed to run the health care program he created in Massachusetts."
Meanwhile, the Cato Institute has a video explaining similarities between the two plans:
Killing Romney's candidacy is good for the Obama administration, because Romney looks like the strongest GOP candidate right now. From Obama's perspective, the crazier the GOP nominee, the better. But it isn't good for liberals (or moderates, or sane conservatives.) Economic conditions might be bad enough that the Republican candidate has a good chance to win, and the country really needs that alternative not to be Sarah Palin or some other nutball.