Thursday, January 5, 2012
Remember the scene in "Rocky..."
...where Apollo Creed is sitting around a hotel room while one of his aides is watching Rocky Balboa punch raw sides of beef on television? (Watch it here.)
"Hey Champ," the aide says nervously to Creed. "You oughta come look at this... looks like he means business."
"Yeah, yeah, I mean business too," Creed replies absentmindedly.
That's how I picture the Romney camp on Tuesday night when Rick Santorum was delivering his speech.
If you haven't heard The Speech by now, you really should listen to it. I was especially moved when Santorum mentioned, at about 17:00, his disabled daughter, Isabella Maria. You see, I, too, have a disabled child. And it hasn't always been easy.
Take health insurance, for example. After leaving the security of a large corporation to go into business for myself, there was the matter of obtaining insurance for my family. But no insurer would touch my younger son, due to his disability. Fortunately, the state of Illinois has a program for such kids and we were able to enroll him in it. (And we pay handsomely for the privilege; his policy costs more than the rest of us combined.) But I'm not complaining; I'm grateful. After all, I'm not asking for charity, just the opportunity to buy insurance.
But The Speech made me wonder, how does Santorum handle insurance for his disabled daughter? Is he lucky enough to live in a state, like mine, with a program for high-risk children?
This morning, I read in Bloomberg that Santorum has gone from being one of the poorest members of the Senate to "earning $1.3 million between January 2010 and August 2011." Good for him!
How did Santorum earn all that money? According to Kent Cooper, a campaign finance expert and former Federal Elections Commission assistant staff director, "This is the thing that insiders do -- after public office they cash in."
And where did Santorum's greatest financial gain come from? Universal Health Services, a health-care management company. Apparently, Santorum has a long history of "working" for the health-care industry (my emphasis):
A supporter of private health savings accounts, he ran against former Senator Harris Wofford, a Democrat who supported President Bill Clinton's failed health-care plan. Santorum received $3 million from the health industry during his congressional career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Blue Cross Blue Shield is his fourth largest lifetime donor, at $114,790, and Cigna is the 10th, with $68,610.
Now, I guess I should have known that Santorum was an "employee" of the health insurance industry. (All Republicans are.) But knowing how famous they are for turning down children with pre-existing conditions, and, after hearing about his own disabled daughter, I thought: so you made a career out of making sure that other parents of disabled children couldn't get insurance for their kids.
Nice.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment