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During a recent interview with Glenn Beck, Rick and Karen Santorum suggested that the Obama administration's health care reform law would harm people with disabilities, like their three-year-old daughter, Bella, who suffers from a rare and usually fatal genetic disorder. ..Yet, even as the Santorums bash Obamacare, their own family story—which includes staggering medical bills that would bankrupt many American families—makes the case for the health care policies that they vigorously oppose.
By cashing in on his senatorial connections to join the 1 percent, Santorum managed to escape the crippling debt that can come with raising a disabled child. But his tax returns appear to show how expensive caring for a disabled child can be under the current health care system, even for someone with health insurance. In 2009 and 2010, the Santorums racked up $100,000 in medical expenses—more than the median American family income each year—and that's after their private insurance paid some costs. During that same time period, they also had nearly $100,000 worth of household assistance—help they didn't have in 2007, before Bella was born. (The Santorum campaign did not respond to questions from Mother Jones about the exact nature of these expenses.)
Nebraska resident Lisa Gourley knows this well. Deprived of oxygen in the womb, her son Colin was born with serious brain damage. After his birth, Gourley couldn't go back to work because Colin needed round-the-clock attention and intensive medical care. ..mounting medical expenses nearly sent the family of six into bankruptcy, a fate they only avoided by selling their house and moving in with Gourley's in-laws for several years. Gourley's husband lost his banking job during the financial crisis, and with it, their private insurance. Later, after her husband found a new job, Gourley discovered that not a single company would insure Colin. "They barely insure you if you have high blood pressure, let alone brain damage," she says.
The new health care reform law now requires insurers to cover kids like Colin, but most of the provisions that will really make private insurance a viable option for families like the Gourleys won't kick in for a few more years..It will put an end to annual or lifetime caps on benefits, which are easily hit by disabled kids. By 2014, the law's "essential benefits" package will require coverage for "habilitative" services, things like speech, occupational, or physical therapy, which are critical to the quality of life for special-needs children. And the law will increase payments to doctors who take Medicaid, which will help ensure that disabled kids in the program can actually find a good provider.
Funny this guy goes around saying how much values life, but seem he doesn't see to value Bella's whose parents can't afford 100,000/yr in medical bill. Half of bankruptcies are related to medical bills and 75% of those people started off with has insurance before benefits ran out,etc. The Gourly's are not exception to the rule, the vast majority whose face these problems are working people not "leeching" off the system. Why? So an industry, that doesn't even innovate, that is merely the middle man, can make billions in profit.
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