(Yahoo! News) -- President Barack Obama promised
cheering supporters in Ohio that he would "make no apologies" for his
overhaul of health care and mocked rival Mitt Romney's apparent change
of heart on his own approach in Massachusetts.
"When you hear all these folks
saying, 'Oh, no, no, this is a tax, this is a burden on middle-class
families,' let me tell you, we know because the guy I'm running against
tried this in Massachusetts and it's working just fine--even though now
he denies it," Obama told about 300 supporters at Dobbins Elementary
School in the village of Poland.
The president brought up health
care often on this week's two day bus tour--the first of this election
cycle. On Friday, the president's reelection campaign promoted an
interview with an NBC affiliate in Cincinnati in which he hit Romney for
changing his tune on whether the individual mandate—the requirement
that people have health insurance—is a penalty or a tax. Romney says
it's a tax in Obamacare but a penalty in his own plan.
"One of the things that you learn
as president is that what you say matters and your principles matter,"
Obama scolded in the interview. "And sometimes, you've got to fight for
things that you believe in and you can't just switch on a dime."
The debate has flared because the
Supreme Court upheld Obama's signature domestic policy achievement
under Congress's taxing power. Republicans have seized on that to accuse
the president of breaking a pledge not to raise taxes on middle-class
families.
The White House insists that the fine imposed is a penalty,
not a tax."We're going to charge you a
penalty to make sure that you're not unloading those costs on everybody
else," Obama said in Poland. "It will affect less than 1 percent of the
population, because most Americans are responsible and do the right
thing. I make no apologies for it."
"We're going to keep it moving
forward. It was the right thing to do two years ago, it's the right
thing to do now, and we're going to keep moving," he said.
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