Ryan has been vocally against the Massachusetts law for years. Ryan hates on 'Romneycare,' the highlights

Many conservatives have criticized the health care law Mitt Romney signed while governor of Massachusetts — and his new running mate Paul Ryan is complainer-in-chief.

The law, which requires most Massachusetts residents to obtain health insurance or face a fine, served as a template for President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act — a fact the right has not let Romney forget.


Ryan, who has built his GOP street cred up with his own health care and budget ideas, has been vocally against the Massachusetts law for years, a key reason many believe he was tapped for Romney's VP slot.

Here's a highlight reel of his objections to Romney's health care

program.

In February of this year, Ryan told the right-leaning CNSNews that the Affordable Care Act — the bane of the right — had "seeds" of Romney's health plan sown in it, although he seemed to pull back some of the heat on Romney himself:

"We have spent the last year in Congress passing various versions of repeal. We're gonna show how we would not only repeal but replace Obamacare. ... Were there seeds of these policy ideas in Massachusetts?

Sure, I think there were. But I think it's clear we're not going there and, we mean, we're not going to take the country down that path. We disagree with the policy architecture. I think the policy architecture of Obamacare has to be pulled up root, branch and everything if we're going to actually save this country."

In March 2011, Ryan told an American Spectator breakfast forum that he had a bone to pick with "Romneycare":

"It's not that dissimilar to Obamacare. ... And you probably know that I'm not a big fan of Obamacare ... I just don't think the mandates work. I haven't studied in depth the status of it, but I think it's beginning to death spiral, they're beginning to have to look at rationing decisions. I don't think this kind of a system works."

Ryan on C-SPAN in 2010:

"No, actually. I'm not a fan of the system ... I've got some relatives up there in Massachusetts. My uncle's a cardiologist in Boston and I've talked to a lot of health folks up there who — what's happening now is because costs are getting out of control, premiums are increasing in Massachusetts and now you have a bureaucracy that is having to put all these controls and now rationing on the system. So people in Massachusetts are saying, yes we have virtually universal health care — I think it's like 96, 98 percent insured — but they see the system bursting by the seams. They see premium increases, rationing and benefit cuts. And they are frustrated with this system. No. 1, they don't want to pay for another system on top of it ... No. 2, they see how this idea of having the government being the single regulator of health insurance defining what kind of health insurance you can have, and then an individual mandate, it is a fatal conceit, and these kinds of systems, as we are now seeing in Massachusetts, are unsustainable."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 8:27 a.m. on August 11, 2012.