Recommended theft

Something Barack Obama should steal from Mitt Romney, his rationale for the individual health care insurance mandate:

"[R]ight now in this country, people that don't have health insurance go to the hospital if they get a serious illness, and they get treated for free by government. My plan says no, they can't do that. No more free riders. People have to take personal responsibility."

I've trimmed off Mitt's claims that this is conservative. This in fact is about basic fairness, the appeal to which members of a social species such as ours almost all understand.

I would phrase it a little better:

As a civilized country, we've decided that no one should be turned away from emergency care even if they can't pay for it. We're humane enough to save lives and worry about who pays the bill later. But free riders have mooched off this system, and we've just put an end to that. Now everyone will have the personal responsibility to pay the fair share they can afford to pay.