Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney raised $4.7 million last year for his political action committee, Free and Strong America, and he shared some of that wealth through contributions to candidates for Congress committed to repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 — familiarly, if not affectionately, known as “ObamaCare.” Yet few have missed the irony of Romney campaigning now for repeal on the national level of the kind of healthcare reform he worked so hard to enact in Massachusetts. Romney has repeatedly been grilled about the similarities between “ObamaCare” for the nation and “Romneycare” for Massachusetts.

“They’re as different as night and day,” he told the Washington Post last year. “There are some words that sound the same, but our plan is based on states solving our issues; [Obama’s] is based on a one-size-fits-all plan.’’ But some of the “words that sound the same” are those describing the nearly universal coverage, the ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, mandates on employers to provide coverage, and, the most controversial feature of the federal law, the “individual mandate” requiring the uninsured to either purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. John Gruber, an MIT economist who advised both the Obama and Romney administrations about their respective healthcare plans, is among those who have disputed Romney’s “night and day” comparison.

“Basically, it’s the same thing,’’ Gruber told the Boston Globe. The national plan would not have been implemented if Romney had not made “the decision in 2005 to go for it” in Massachusetts, Gruber said. “He is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform.’’

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