‘More Government Needed in Health Care’ - Rick Santorum, 1993
How times have changed….
Compared with what Rick said in 2011,EXCLUSIVE: The 2012 candidate once argued it was “wrong” for the federal government not to be “proactive” in shaping the health care market and boasted his voting record was “in the middle.”
Rick Santorum’s pitch to Republican voters is simple: He is the “true” and “consistent” conservative in the GOP’s presidential nomination fight. He describes himself as “a candidate who, throughout [his] career, has not only checked the box on conservative issues but has fought for conservative issues.” And he slams front-runner Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on abortion and the Wall Street bailouts and, most of all, for passing government-mandated health care reform in Massachusetts. If elected president, Santorum vows he will end the “tyranny” of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Yet as an up-and-coming congressman in the early 1990s, Santorum took a much different line. Then—like now—health care was one of the nation’s most divisive issues. In 1993, Republicans were up in arms about a health care reform bill spearheaded by Hillary Clinton and pushed by President Bill Clinton. Republicans decried the measure as excessive government intervention in the marketplace, and Santorum opposed the legislation. But his position was not so clear cut.
During that fiery debate, Santorum said it would be a mistake to allow the delivery of health care services to be determined only by the market. He asserted that Republicans were “wrong” to let the “marketplace” decide how health care works. He instead argued that government should play a “proactive” role in shaping the health care marketplace “to make it work better.”
At a November 2011 debate, Santorum boasted about his unwavering conservative record on health care. “I was always for having the government out of the health care business,” he said, “and for a bottom-up, consumer-driven health care, which is different than Governor Romney and some of the other people on this panel.” Yet Santorum, who has attacked Romney for reversing his positions, has flip-flopped as well.I could add commentary here about what a flip-flop this is, or what a hypocrite Santorum is, but I think the article pretty much speaks for itself on all of those. I will however, laugh like a 12 year old at the frothy one talking about “bottom up” driven healthcare.
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