Is GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney even more left of President Obama in some aspects? He would never admit to that, but in a 2009 op-ed for USA Today, Romney did encourage the president to adopt elements of the health-care plan he had for his own state of Massachusetts—particularly the issue of individual mandate, which Obama didn't even take up, much to the chagrin of many liberal Democrats. Romney has repeatedly tried to distance himself from health care, and denies his own plan influenced Obamacare. But in the op-ed, which doesn't appear on the newspaper's website anymore, Romney spelled out his support of penalizing the uninsured: "Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others."
