Romney backs away from healthcare pledge

Mitt Romney has said he would keep the most popular parts of Barack Obama's signature healthcare reforms if elected president, performing an abrupt about-turn on his earlier campaign promise to repeal the whole law.

His comments will reignite suspicions that the Republican presidential candidate is a politician of expediency and likely anger the party’s conservative base, which sees “Obamacare” as a symbol of the big government approach it wants to scrap.

They came as three new national polls showed Mr Obama extending his lead over Mr Romney following last week’s Democratic national convention, suggesting that the president was enjoying the kind of post-convention “bounce” that eluded the Republican.

Gallup’s latest daily poll gave Mr Obama 49 per cent support among registered voters, while Mr Romney was five points behind with 44 per cent. Both the conservative polling firm Rasmussen  and Reuters/Ipsos poll gave the president a four-point lead.

“The bump is actually happening,” said Julia Clark, an Ipsos pollster. "How big it'll be and how long it will last remains to be seen.”

Analysts warned that Mr Obama’s lead might be eroded by the latest jobs report, released on Friday, which was worse than expected and showed the continued malaise in the economy.

But Mr Romney continues to make problems for his own campaign.

In an interview on NBC's Meet the Presson Sunday morning, Mr Romney said: “I'm not getting rid of all of healthcare reform” if elected president in November.

"Of course there are a number of things that I like in healthcare reform that I'm going to put in place,” he said, including making sure that people with pre-existing conditions can get health coverage and allowing family policies to cover dependants until whatever age they choose.

“I also want individuals to be able to buy insurance . . . on their own," he said.

These are all key components of, or close variations on, Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms enacted in 2010.

The most controversial part of Mr Obama’s law is the “individual mandate”, which requires almost all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. When critics attack the law, it is usually the mandate they are objecting to, as many of the other provisions are popular across the political spectrum.

Mr Romney will open himself to further accusations of “flip-flopping” with the comments.

As governor of Massachusetts, he enacted a healthcare plan that became the blueprint for Mr Obama’s reforms. Given conservative opposition to Mr Obama’s law, Mr Romney has since said he never intended it to be a model for a federal plan and has repeatedly vowed to repeal “Obamacare”.

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US elections 2012

Republican candidate Mitt Romney takes on President Barack Obama in the race for the White House

On Meet the Press, however, he suggested that he would keep many aspects of the law.

"I say we're going to replace Obamacare," Mr Romney said. "And I'm replacing it with my own plan. And even in Massachusetts when I was governor, our plan there deals with pre-existing conditions and with young people."

Also talking healthcare, Mr Obama travelled through the swing state of Florida, home to a large elderly population, over the weekend on a bus.

The president sharply criticised Mr Romney over his plans to turn Medicare, the health insurance scheme for seniors, into a voucher system.

“Here’s the bottom line: Their voucher plan for Medicare would bankrupt Medicare. Our plan strengthens Medicare,” the president told a crowd of about 3,000 people at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

He cited a new report from David Cutler, a Harvard economics professor who supported the president’s healthcare overhaul, as saying that Mr Romney’s plan would take money from middle-class people to give it to big insurance companies.

“I want you to know, Florida, I will never turn Medicare into a voucher,” he said. “If you work hard all your life, then you should have some basic security . . . to know that it’s going to be there for you. And I have to tell you, that is going to be part of what’s at stake in this election.”

Separately, Mr Romney was also challenged about declining to mention the war in Afghanistan in his convention speech, an omission which commentators on both the right and left have criticised him for.

“I find it interesting that people are curious about mentioning words in a speech as opposed to policy,” Mr Romney said, adding that he mentioned the war in Afghanistan in a speech to the American Legion just before the convention.

Told that that speech did not have the same audience as the convention, Mr Romney replied: “You know, what I’ve found is that wherever I go I am speaking to tens of millions of people. Everything I say is picked up by you and by others and that’s the way it ought to be.”

Mr Romney also said that he had been to Afghanistan and the troops “know of my commitment”.