Clinton administration veteran and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber has long supported publicly-funded coverage expansion, and now he is attacking Mitt Romney for claiming that his Massachusetts health law is meaningfully different from the national health law backed by President Obama. One gets the distinct impression that the president’s allies are keen to get Romney’s Republican rivals to press this issue more aggressively, and it is easy to see why.

This exchange reminded me of an interesting post by the progressive blogger Jerome Armstrong, published early last year.