A “Special Kind Of Human Being”: Rick Santorum’s Despicable And Hurtful Health Care Lie
You have to want to be President awfully badly to purposely scare the hell out of parents whose children face illness and disability in their lives. You also have to be a perfectly despicable human being.
Appearing yesterday with his wife, Karen, on the Glenn Beck program, Rick Santorum joined his wife in ‘revealing’ that it was the passage of Obamacare that motivated them to enter into the presidential race.
According to Karen Santorum, “Because 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.”
Had that been the end of it, I’d have no problem whatsoever with Mrs. Santorum’s comment. If Karen Santorum feels that there is a better way to protect the health and wellbeing of her child, it is not only her right but her responsibility to do everything she can on behalf of her little girl and every child out there in similar circumstances. I would fully respect her for the same even if I disagree with her assessment of what the law means to her daughter and others who suffer illness.
But it did not end there—not by a long shot. Instead, Rick Santorum chimed in his agreement by arguing that the health care law would ration care based on the ‘usefulness’ of an individual.
It’s all about utilization, right? It’s all about how do we best allocate resources where they are most effectively used? […] Government allocating resources best on how to get the best bang for your dollars and it’s all about utility. It’s 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.
I don’t believe that Rick Santorum knows the first thing about dignity in a human life. He couldn’t. If he did he could not possibly have made such a statement knowing how this would cause fear for so many when it is a complete lie.
Never mind that the ACA has made it possible for children like Bella Santorum to always access health insurance, without lifetime caps and without the possibility for exclusion because of being born with a tragic illness or disability. Never mind that, because of the ACA, children born into a lifetime of medical challenges will never again face a time when they are denied the health insurance necessary to pay for their expensive healthcare needs.
And never mind that we are left to scratch our heads in wonderment that leading organizations such as the American Association of People with Disabilities, National Organization For Rare Disorders, The Arc of the United States, and numerous additional widely recognized and respected groups whose sole purpose is to represent the needs of those Santorum tells us will be deemed disposable, have not only registered their support for the ACA, but have gone to the trouble and expense to actually file an amicus brief with the Supreme Court to defend the law.
Apparently, Santorum either believes that these organizations are led by the dumbest people alive; that they have entered into some sort of deal with the devil to sell out the very people they exist to defend for reasons that escape the rational mind; or he simply could not care less that his statements will be heard by people who are the parents of special children and that they will be terrified.
Let’s take a look at the what law actually does and who it affects.
The government board that Santorum pretends to fear is the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) which is authorized to make changes to Medicare—and only Medicare. Accordingly, while some children with challenges like little Bella Santorum could find themselves qualified for coverage in Medicare, young Bella would not be affected by any decisions of the IPAB as the Santorum family has their own insurance coverage. Further, the legislative record makes clear that the IPAB is not to offer any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or increase Medicare beneficiary premiums, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (deductibles, coinsurance, or co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.
And if, by some evil act, the IPAB does attempt to ration healthcare, Congress has the specific authority under the law to shoot it right down.
If Rick Santorum doesn’t understand the law, he should. And if he is too lazy or finds it too inconvenient to correctly cite the law when lying is so much better for political purposes, then he could,at least, show sufficient humanity to avoid targeting his political potshots in a way designed to frighten those with challenged children.
You see, should the ACA continue to be the law of the land and Rick Santorum is not president, Santorum gets to return to his cushy lobbying gig. But all of these parents with special needs children—the people Santorum has so needlessly frightened—will be left to worry forever because Rick Santorum thought this all made for a nifty campaign pitch.
I guess when your ambition is as big as Senator Santorum’s, you can’t be worried about the damage to you do to those who are the most vulnerable.
I understand very well that many people object to the Affordable Care Act for a variety of reasons. And while I am convinced that if people better understood the law the result would be greater support for the law, this is wholly beside the point.
If your own judgment is that Obamacare is not the best way to address our healthcare problems, fine. That’s what America is all about. If you have a better idea as to how to deal with the issue then, by all means, vote for those who share your approach and work hard to make any change you believe is necessary, even if that includes repealing the Act.
However, when Rick Santorum tells us that the law would deny the right to life and the care needed to sustain that life to children like his own daughter, because such a child would be deemed to not be of ‘sufficient use to society’, he accuses the President, every member of Congress who supported the law, and every other supporter, such as myself, of being unfit to walk to this earth.
Anyone is welcomed to disagree with my judgment as to whether the Affordable Care Act is a good or a bad law. If my opinion is wrong, it won’t be the first time or the last that this will prove to be the case. But if you are going to accuse me of being willing to allow a child—or anyone else— to die because I would somehow deem her to be inconsequential to society, you’d really better be prepared to not only say that to my face but take the punishment that I promise you will follow.
What’s all the more amazing is that Santorum’s statement doesn’t even make sense.
In point of fact, the elements of the law that allegedly so concern Santorum do not even begin to ‘kick in’ until 2014. Thus, President Obama would only preside over its implementation for a very few years. And yet, Rick Santorum suggests that he is of the belief that Congresses and presidents in the years to come—some of whom will no doubt be Republican—would stand idly by while people are allowed to die because they are no longer deemed useful to society.
It is precisely because Santorum’s statement makes no sense, and precisely because he so badly cites the reality of the law, that we know that it is nothing but pure politics. And playing politics with the hearts of people whose lives are already tough enough takes a very special kind of human being—the kind that would never be welcomed at my dinner table.
American politics is a contact sport to be sure. But when the front-runner for his party’s nomination is willing to level charges such as this just to score some cheap political points while giving every parent with a challenged child a false reason to lie awake at night with worry, it is Rick Santorum’s usefulness to our society —not the value of the sick and disabled—that remains very much in question.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, February 25, 2012
Low, Even For A “Culture Warrior”: Why Would A Politician Attack Pre-Natal Testing?
Over the last few years, there’s been no shortage of attacks from the right against the Affordable Care Act, but going after provisions related to pre-natal testing appears to be a new one.
Rick Santorum accused President Obama of requiring free prenatal testing in the health care plan he signed in 2010 because it would detect if children were disabled, encourage more abortions and save money.
“One of the things that you don’t know about ObamaCare in one of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing,” Santorum began telling about 400 people here. “Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. That too is part of ObamaCare — another hidden message as to what president Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country.”
CBS’s Bob Schieffer pressed Santorum on this point yesterday, saying, “You sound like you’re saying that the purpose of pre-natal care is to cause people to have abortions.” The Republican presidential hopeful didn’t back down, arguing, “[A] lot of pre-natal tests are done to identify deformities in utero and the customary procedure is to encourage abortions.”
Even for Santorum, this is low.
For one thing, medical experts know Santorum’s line is nonsense. As MSNBC’s First Read explained, “There is value in pre-natal testing, because it can detect potential problems in utero or at delivery and allow parents and doctors to get the proper care for their child.”
For another, trying to turn pre-natal care into yet another culture-war battle is ridiculous. University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack, an expert in health policy, added, “Santorum’s comments are only made uglier by their utter lack of foundation. There is no evidence whatsoever that liberals — let alone President Obama — are less solicitious or caring about the disabled than other Americans. I’ve never heard any liberal health policy wonk promote genetic technologies to ‘cull the ranks of the disabled’ or as part of any cost-cutting plan. That ugly meme is completely made up. By any reasonable measure, the proliferation of genetic diagnostic technologies coincides with great progress in public acceptance and support for people with disabilities.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 20, 2012
Why The Catholic Contraception Controversy Is A Phony Battle
Public health and women’s autonomy collided with religion last week. Elders in the Catholic Church were incensed as the regulations implementing the federal healthcare law would have required institutions affiliated with the Church (but not the Church itself) to provide health plans covering contraception. The rules (part of the normal regulation-writing process that comes after a sweeping law is enacted) would not have forced the Church or its clergymen to hand out birth control; they only would have required Catholic-affiliated schools, hospitals, and universities to play by the rules everyone else has to follow, and provide for full healthcare coverage for women.
The Obama administration, under fire as the health issue turned into a political issue, offered a compromise: health insurance companies would have to provide the free birth control to the female employees (some of whom are not even Catholic), but the religious-affiliated institutions would not have to pay for it.
It was a dodge of sorts, to be sure, but it gave the bishops the cover they needed to maintain the Catholic Church standard opposing contraception. Still, it was a generous compromise. And now the bishops are suggesting it is not enough, citing “serious moral concerns” about the compromise, particularly as it might apply to entities that self-insure.
That, on its own, is a bit of a stretch. The Church, after all, has given marriage annulments to politically-connected people who had not only been married for years, but have had children. If that’s not an inartful dodge around the Church rule forbidding divorce, nothing is. And while it’s probably not helpful to resurrect the painful episode of the decades of child sexual abuse by priests and the failure of the Church to stop them, it’s also true that the institution of the Church is still rebuilding its “moral” brand.
Picking a fight with the Obama administration does nothing to advance that goal. Nor does it improve the Church’s power over its own flock—98 percent of whom have used birth control. Government should indeed protect religious freedom, which is why no one’s asking priests to marry same-sex couples or forcing Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. But what the Church is dangerously close to doing is an equally invasive reverse: asking the government to try to enforce a rule the Church has been wildly unsuccessful in imposing on its own members.
There’s one clear reason why both the Church and the GOP presidential candidates have been raising the tired old accusations of the a war on Catholicism (an allegation that is extremely insulting to Catholics, to whom faith in God is sincere and unshakeable—certainly not threatened by a coworker getting free birth control pills). It’s an election year, so it’s prime time for making hyperbolic and incendiary accusations that have little basis in fact. Social issues have been largely absent from the campaign so far, and for a reason: the economy has been so bad that it was enough of an issue for GOP candidates to run on. But now that the unemployment rate is creeping slowly down and the stock market is stabilizing, the economy may retreat somewhat as an issue. And that leads candidates to insert wedge issues like the contraception debate.
Remarkably, opponents of the Obama administration rule, along with self-described liberal pundits, are convinced that the “Catholic vote” will rise up against Obama in the fall. That analysis assumes that all Catholics vote according to their Church’s dictates, which is absurd, especially in this case. If nearly all Catholics use birth control, why on earth would they vote against a president who tried to make access to birth control easier? Those who are that upset about contraception weren’t planning to vote for this president, anyway.
There will be more social issues raised during this election year, especially after the GOP nomination is sealed. But the contraception debate is a phony one.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 13, 2012
Republican Women Senators Breaking Ranks With Party, Come Out In Favor Of Obama Contraception Rule
While GOP senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has pledged to fight the Obama’s administration’s modified regulation requiring health insurers and busnisses to offer contraception coverage without additional cost sharing, the revised rule “appears to have won over” two of the five Republican women senators.
Sens. Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME) — both of whom have sponsored legislation requiring insurers to offer contraception benefits in all health plans — are in favor of the new compromise, which would allow religiously affiliated colleges, universities, and hospitals to avoid providing birth control. Their employees will still receive contraception coverage at no additional cost sharing directly from the insurer:
“It appears that changes have been made that provide women’s health services without compelling Catholic organizations in particular to violate the beliefs and tenets of their faith,” Snowe said in a statement. “According to the Catholic Health Association, the administration ‘responded to the issues [they] identified that needed to be fixed,’ which is what I urged the president to do in addressing this situation.
“While I will carefully review the details of the president’s revised proposal, it appears to be a step in the right direction,” Collins said in a statement. “The administration’s original plan was deeply flawed and clearly would have posed a threat to religious freedom. It presented the Catholic Church with its wide-ranging social, educational, and health care services, and many other faith-based organizations, with an impossible choice between violating their religious beliefs or violating federal regulations. The administration has finally listened to the concerns raised by many and appears to be seeking to avoid the threat to religious liberties posed by its original plan.”
Republicans in the senate seem determined to oppose the compromise and have introduced legislation that would allow employers or individuals to opt out of any benefit that undermines their moral beliefs. “They don’t have the authority under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to tell someone in this country or some organization in this country what their religious beliefs are,” McConnell told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “This issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down,” he said.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who led the GOP’s opposition to the original rule, has yet to issue a statement on the measure and did not respond to ThinkProgress’ query about her position. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) also did not respond. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) co-sponsored a 1999 bill requiring contraception equity in insurance coverage and has not yet to weigh in on the current debate.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, February 13, 2012
Romney Shows He Hasn’t Read Obama’s Modified Birth Control Reg During Rowdy Maine Town Hall
Mitt Romney doubled down on his new-found objection to contraception coverage during a town hall in Maine on Friday. Romney — who remained mum as Massachusetts implemented a measure requiring insurance companies to cover contraception in 2003, signed into law a health care reform bill that has greatly expanded access to state-funded birth control, and required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims — told a rowdy crown in Portland, Maine that President Obama’s modified contraception rule does not go far enough:
At the event, Romney also waded into the political fray over the decision by the Obama administration today to require insurers, rather than private employers, to pay for coverage of contraception. The move reversed an earlier decision that would have required religious-affiliated organizations, such as Catholic hospitals, to provide the coverage, prompting an outcry from across the political spectrum.
“Today he did the classic Obama retreat all right, and what I mean by that is, it wasn’t a retreat at all. It’s another deception,” Romney said, arguing that that religious organizations still will have to pay for contraception after insurance companies pass the costs along to employers.
“Companies consist of people, and someone has to pay — the owners, the employees or the customers, and they pass those costs on to the customers,”
he said.
But it’s Romney who is being devious here. Actuaries and real world experiences in covering contraception in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) have found that contraception coverage is at the very least cost neutral within the context of the benefits of the health care plan. And in announcing its compromise on Friday, the administration pledged to work with insurers to issue future regulations that would specifically stipulate that if a religiously affiliated nonprofit chooses to avoid offering contraception in its health care plan, “there be no charge for the contraceptive coverage” for the employer or the employee.
As a senior administration official explained to the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff, “Our policy is saying that the Catholic hospital doesn’t want to cover contraceptives, and they don’t include that in their policy. It also says that Aetna needs to provide contraceptive services for free to workers in the plan. Aetna sets the premium, but it cannot be higher than it would have been without birth control. The premium does not include contraception.” “There is a sort of bank account,” says the official. So, in this particular hypothetical, “Aetna is sucking it up.”
In other words, providing contraception without additional cost sharing will become “a legitimate cost of doing business” for health insurers who work with religious nonprofits, and while they may not be all too thrilled at the prospect, administration officials expect them to agree “that this is going to be a cost-neutral benefit.”
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, February 13, 2012
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