Rick Santorum: Obamacare Poster Boy

[xchrom]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/santorum-health-spending-medicaid-contraception-hypocrisy

During a recent interview with Glenn Beck, Rick and Karen Santorum suggested that the Obama administration's health care reform law would harm people with disabilities, like their three-year-old daughter, Bella, who suffers from a rare and usually fatal genetic disorder. In fact, it was because of President Obama's health care overhaul, they said, that the former Pennsylvania senator decided to seek the presidency. "We have as you know a little angel, little Bella, special-needs little girl, and when Obamacare passed, that was it, that put the fire in my belly," Karen said. Rick added that Obama's Affordable Care Act is "all about the usefulness of the person to society, instead of the dignity of every human life and the opportunity for people who love and care for people to give them the best possibility to have the best possible life." Yet, even as the Santorums bash Obamacare, their own family story—which includes staggering medical bills that would bankrupt many American families—makes the case for the health care policies that they vigorously oppose.

By cashing in on his senatorial connections to join the 1 percent, Santorum managed to escape the crippling debt that can come with raising a disabled child. But his tax returns appear to show how expensive caring for a disabled child can be under the current health care system, even for someone with health insurance. In 2009 and 2010, the Santorums racked up $100,000 in medical expenses—more than the median American family income each year—and that's after their private insurance paid some costs. During that same time period, they also had nearly $100,000 worth of household assistance—help they didn't have in 2007, before Bella was born. (The Santorum campaign did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about the exact nature of these expenses.)

"The financial implications [of having a disabled child] can be pretty catastrophic pretty fast," says Katy Neas, senior vice president for government affairs at Easter Seals, which provides services to more than a million disabled people every year. "Families end up losing everything because of health care costs." She says the medical expenses the Santorums have incurred aren't unusual for families with disabled children. Private insurance plans, she says, don't meet these kids' needs, largely because they impose tight limits on payments for the various therapies disabled kids require. And until the Obama health care reform law passed, insurers simply wouldn't cover many disabled children.

[spanone]

1. these people are mentally unstable.