Republican Presidential Candidates on Repealing Obamacare (ContributorNetwork)

In March, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's health care reform legislation, Obamacare. The court must determine whether the individual mandate component of the law, which effectively forces Americans to buy health insurance, is a power extended by the Congress' ability to regulate interstate commerce.

At the most recent South Carolina GOP debate, the Republican presidential candidates had an opportunity to voice their opinions on Obamacare. Here is what they said, according to a debate transcript provided by the Chicago Sun-Times:

* Mitt Romney

: "We have to go after a complete repeal. And that's going to have to happen with a House and a Senate, hopefully that are Republican. If we don't have a Republican majority, I think we're going to be able to convince some Democrats that when the American people stand up loud and clear and say, we do not want Obamacare, we do not want the higher taxes, we do not want a $500 billion cut in Medicare to pay for Obamacare. I think you're going to see the American people stand with our president and say, let's get rid of Obamacare."

* Newt Gingrich: "You have to elect a House, a Senate and a president committed to that (repealing the legislation). It has to be a major part of the fall campaign. And I think that, frankly, on our side with any of us, it's going to be a major part of the fall campaign. The American people are frightened of bureaucratic centralized medicine, they deeply distrust Washington, and the pressure will be to repeal it. ? Why is President Obama for young people being allowed to stay on their parents' insurance until 26? Because he can't get any jobs for them to go out and buy their own insurance. I mean, I have an offer to the parents of America: Elect us, and your kids will be able to move out, because they'll have work."

* Rick Santorum: "The core of Obamacare is an individual mandate. It is what is being litigated in the Supreme Court right now. It is government top-down telling every business and every American what kind of health care that you will have. That is the problem with Obamacare at the core of it. And the speaker supported it repeatedly for a 10-year period. So when he goes and says, I can, you know, run rings around President Obama in a Lincoln-Douglas debate, you can't run rings around the fact, Newt, that you supported the primary core basis of what President Obama's put in place."

* Ron Paul: "I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early '60s, before we had any government. It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care. But Medicare and Medicaid came in and it just expanded. But even when we had the chance to cut back on it, when we had a Republican Congress and a Republican president, we gave them prescription drug programs. Senator Santorum supported it. You know, that's expanding the government! ?We will get rid of all this government program, unfortunately because we're going bankrupt and you're going to have runaway inflation and our checks are going to bounce. And that's going to be a lot worse problem than we're facing tonight."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120121/pl_ac/10864077_republican_presidential_candidates_on_repealing_obamacare

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