Romney: Obama 'dishonest' about Obamacare

Romney: Obama 'dishonest' about Obamacare

Mitt Romney lashed out at Barack Obama on Sunday, saying the president has been dishonest about the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

"He told people that they could keep their insurance and that was not the truth," Romney said on "Meet The Press" via satellite from Salt Lake City, Utah, nearly a year after he lost to Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

The former Massachusetts governor said the president "failed to learn the lessons" that came from his state's groundbreaking 2006 health care law, on which the Affordable Care Act is based.

"The most important lesson the president, I think, failed to learn was, you have to tell the American people the truth," Romney said. "And when he told the American people that you could keep your health insurance if you wanted to keep that plan — period, he said that time and again — he wasn't telling the truth."

Romney continued: "He went out as a centerpiece of his campaign and as a centerpiece of Obamacare over the last several years saying time and time again that fundamental to his plan was the right people would have to keep their insurance plan, and he knew that was not the case."

Obama's "fundamental dishonesty" about his signature health care law, Romney said, has "undermined the president's credibility" and "put in peril the whole foundation of his second term."

"We've got to have a president that can lead, and right now he cannot do so," he said.

Recalling the 2012 campaign, the former Republican nominee disputed the notion that his heart wasn't fully in it. "No one could have worked harder than myself and my family did," Romney said. "We were all in 110 percent. And we wanted to win very desperately."

"Frankly, I was concerned that if the president were re-elected, the economy would continue to dwindle along, we would continue to lose credibility around the world, the American people would find it harder and harder to get jobs," he said. "And we're seeing those things happen before our very eyes."

Romney also brushed aside assertions made in "Double Down: Game Change 2012," an upcoming book about the 2012 election, that Romney did not choose Chris Christie as his running mate because of serious reservations he had about the New Jersey governor.

"There's nothing they found that wasn't part of the [public] record," Romney said. "There's nothing new there."

Christie, he said, has "the kind of popularity and track record the GOP needs if we're going to take back the White House."

Romney said Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney's 2012 running mate, would all be formidable presidential nominees for the Republican Party in 2016.