Romney addresses concerns about Massachusetts’s individual mandate for the first time. Mitt's health care defense

LAS VEGAS — Mitt Romney directly addressed the Obama administration’s backhanded plaudits of his Massachusetts health care law Saturday, defending the law's controversial individual mandate for the first time and promising that it wouldn't impede an aggressive attack on the president and his health care policy.

"I will take [President Barack Obama] head on and aggressively if I'm the nominee," Romney told about 150 members of the Republican Jewish Coalition in town for their winter meeting.


Romney came to talk about foreign policy. But the crowd wanted to ask him about health care — and Romney's responses left him sounding more like a presidential candidate than at any time since his last campaign ended in 2008.

For weeks, the White House has gleefully pointed out the similarities between the Massachusetts law and the federal law, describing Romney as an inspiration for health care reform. Romney finally struck back Saturday. "If we get the chance to talk about health care, which would be fun, because he does me great favor by saying I was the inspiration for his plan," he said. "If that was the case, why didn't you call me? Why didn't you ask me what was wrong?

"I can't wait to have those conversations and I'll take it to him," Romney added.

And, Romney cracked, he's probably better off this time around. "Had I become the nominee [in 2008], then I'd have been the guy who lost to Barack Obama," he said.

Romney didn't mention health care during his approximately 20-minute speech, but it was the very first question from an audience member who wanted to know the difference between Romney's plan and Obama's, and if Romney would commit to repealing Obama’s health care law.

Romney repeated his intention to allow states to opt out of the national law and he said he would work to repeal it. But he also offered an aggressive defense of the Massachusetts law’s individual mandate for citizens to purchase health insurance — the first time this year he's addressed concerns about the section of the legislation that most riles movement conservatives.

"If somebody in your state who doesn't have insurance has a terrible automobile accident … we don't let them die in the street," Romney said. "Guess who pays for it? You. The government."

"We said, you know what, this free rider problem is a real concern," he added. "That concept led us to coming up with an experiment."

Before he took questions, Romney used sparse notes to walk through a list of critiques of Obama's "wandering foreign policy" — and he charged that Obama's inexperience has led to a series of American failures abroad.

"Given all that's been happening in the world, the tumult in the world… we picked a fine time to pick a president, a man who has no experience in the private sector, no experience in negotiations, no experience really in leadership," Romney said. "And the consequence of having someone learning on the job in the presidency has not been a pretty sight."

That inexperience has led to blunders at the negotiating table with Israel and the Palestinian Authority and with Russia, Romney said.

Romney also walked through a series of what he called foreign policy blunders in Honduras, Colombia and with Iran — but he made no direct mention of America's ongoing involvement in Libya, except to obliquely reference Obama's address to the country earlier this week.

"I don't think he understands that not all the leaders of the world have common interests or all the people in the world have common interests," Romney said, noting there are leaders who oppress and kill their people. "We are not like them, and we don't have common interests with them. We have common interests with people who seek and love freedom."