In the first New Hampshire debate, he said he supports a federal mandate that states enact universal healthcare, although he said the states can choose what sort of universal healthcare plan to enact (Arnold's socialist option or Romney's facist option, oh the choices we'll have).
Once you decide you aren’t going to let people die on the sidewalk in front of the hospital because they don’t have the cash to pay for a simple treatment that would save them, the application of conservative principles to solving the problem some other way becomes a bit murky.
Since we don't do that now, your statement makes little sense. Mitt said himself he "love['s]mandates." There's nothing conservative about that. Sometimes the real truth comes out for him when he stops reading from the script (e.g. when he instructed phone bank workers to "Make whatever promises you have to.")
I’m sorry, you are correct, I was going on the assumption that we agreed that the “conservative” answer wasn’t that more and more people get free health care handouts paid for with our tax dollars.
Increasing government expenditures for people’s health care would of course be an option. I would argue it’s not the conservative one.