So yes, there are differences – but in Gruber’s words, "the basic structure's the same."

Which is why it’s so galling – if entirely unsurprising – to see Romney (pictured at right) either avoiding or disavowing his signature achievement as governor when he's on the hustings.

Disingenuous Romney
When Romney does deign to speak about the Massachusetts law, he is mealy-mouthed, essentially saying healthcare laws should be up to the states, or that what was good for Massachusetts is not necessarily good for the rest of the country.

"That's disingenuous," says Gruber, a Democrat. "First of all, there's no reason why it wouldn't be right for other states. He never says why."

[Political Malpractice: How politics distort Americans' perception of health reform.]

Second, Gruber says, the only reasons Massachusetts could enact its law in the first place was with the help of federal contributions. "So if Romney's willing to say, 'I'll pony up the money for other states that want to do this,' that's one thing. But he's not saying that,” Gruber adds. “You can't do it without the same help from the federal government that we got. So he's being very disingenuous in that position."

Beyond fiscal issues, however, Romney is also being ideologically insincere.

When Romney left office in 2007, he and his aides took with them hard drives from 17 state-owned computers, having also scrubbed emails from his office PC.

But earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal uncovered a trove of correspondence that showed just how strongly he believed in his health reform law – especially the individual mandate.

Indeed, his aides even toyed with some ideas that were too extreme for Democrats, such as naming and shaming employers that didn't offer coverage.

"I know the ems hate this, but we can also [throw] back in the Gov's original notion of having some sort of 'public disclosure' of employers who promote a culture of uninsurance," wrote Romney adviser Cindy Gillespie on Feb. 13, 2006.

Romney made no secret of his affection for the individual mandate. He had no reason to, since it's essentially a conservative idea. As he wrote in a July 2009 USA Today op-ed, recently dug up by BuzzFeed:

Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar. Second, we helped pay for our new program by ending an old one — something government should do more often. The federal government sends an estimated $42 billion to hospitals that care for the poor: Use those funds instead to help the poor buy private insurance, as we did.

"He was a firm believer in the individual mandate," Gruber says. "He believed in it very strongly on moral grounds, and basically felt there were people in Massachusetts who could afford health insurance and weren't buying it, therefore free-riding on the rest of us.

[Related: 3 ACA aspects states should keep no matter how SCOTUS rules.]

"My contribution to the debate was to bring the numbers to bear and say, not only is that a moral argument, there's actually a financial argument that it's a cost-efficient way to cover the uninsured," Gruber adds. "Those arguments together got him very excited about the mandate and he was a huge proponent."

Republicans falling for pieces of Obamacare
Simply put: Obamacare is a conservative plan with the very intention of reforming the payment system to save the federal government – and its taxpayers – billions if not trillions of dollars, and simultaneously bolster patient care.

"The credit here should go to Barack Obama for adopting a fundamentally Republican plan [rather than] universal coverage. So thumbs up to him, and thumbs down to Romney and the Republican Party for essentially running away from their idea," Gruber says. "I mean, at the [Massachusetts] bill signing, on the podium was a guy from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, praising the conservative principles behind this bill. I mean, that was six years ago! This wasn't a hundred years ago, it was six years ago. It's pure, craven politics that they're now running away from this."