The list of things Rick Santorum shouldn't be allowed to talk about is very long—gay rights, contraception, foreign policy, coal mining—and it keeps getting bigger every day. Today, we should toss health care on that list. He thinks if we just prioritized our health above our iPads, everything would be all right:
“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” Santorum said, “but paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”The mother said the boy was on the drug Abilify, used to treat schizophrenia, and that, on paper, its costs would exceed $1 million each year...“He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” Santorum said. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t.”
That line—"I sympathize with these compassionate cases"—is kind of a Romney I-am-a-human-being-really-guys-I-mean-it kind of line. Translated, it means, "As near as I can tell, you're not a gay or a lazy ethnic, so you have a Genuine Problem, which is sad, but you're messing with my only thesis here, lady, so you should go away and not come back."
