What RomneyCare and HillaryCare Have in Common

Jonathan Cohn has an article in the latest New Republic titled "Hillary Was Right" [$] that helpfully explains certain similarities between HillaryCare and RomneyCare:

In Washington, at least, praising HillaryCare will get you laughed off the talk shows.  But...if you look closely at the proposals experts and officials are tossing around, you may start to recognize some familiar elements...They also envision, as did HillaryCare, a government role in making sure affordable, high-quality plans are made available -- typically, by creating (again, like HillaryCare) some sort of purchasing cooperative through which some, if not all, of the population would buy their coverage.  That's true of the plan former Senator John Edwards proposed as part of his presidential campaign a few months ago.  It's true of the plan Senator Ron Wyden introduced in Congress back in December.  It's even true of the plan former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed into law before leaving office last year -- even though Romney has made mocking HillaryCare a staple of his campaign rhetoric as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination.

I'll have more to say about the RomneyCare-HillaryCare "connection" soon.