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Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum thinks the biggest problem with the nation’s health care system is that patients don’t pay enough.  Responding to a series of questions from a WFW activist during a campaign stop in Iowa, the former Pennsylvania senator claimed that Americans “over utilize” health services because they “have no idea what it costs—and they don’t care!”  Falsely claiming that under the federal Affordable Care Act “government gets to decide your access to care,” Santorum advocated repealing the AFA and making health insurance more like auto insurance, so the sick would be just as afraid of volatile insurance rates as drivers are now.

Health care is not a luxury that people indulge in carelessly—it’s a human need that too many Americans already can’t afford.  The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) actually takes power that now rests with faceless bureaucrats in the huge, for-profit health insurance industry and puts it in the hands of individual consumers by making it easier to find, keep and pay for private insurance.  It’s remarkable that Santorum would like to reproduce in the health insurance system Americans’ famously dysfunctional relationship with their auto insurance companies—one often based on fear and deceit—rather than embrace the improved choice and accountability offered by the Affordable Care Act.

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act, such as Santorum proposes, would return the American people to the tender mercies of the insurance industry, deny millions of sick kids health coverage, throw millions of young adults off their parents policies, and raise drug prices on seniors. It's in fact the current system, which health-care reform is attempting to improve, that's centralized—with the center being a handful of private, for-profit insurance companies that dictate level and quality of care to doctors, hospitals and patients. It's the current system of private-sector waste, abuse and bureaucracy that's busting budgets, from the federal government's down to individual households'. And it's the current system that limits choices and options, first and foremost by giving 30 million Americans without health insurance no choices or options at all.