Think Progress

Santorum Swings Both Ways

By Jon Baskin on Mar 29th, 2005 at 11:47 am

Speaking of politicians whose personal family decisions happen to conflict with their political demagoguing on health care issues, Josh Marshall brings our attention to Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-PA) medical malpractice hypocrisy. In 1996, Santorum testified on behalf of his wife Karen, who was seeking $500,000 in pain and suffering against Dr. David Dolberg of Virginia, because of pain from his 1996 chiropractic treatment of her.

Funny, that didn’t stop Santorum from supporting and voting for a bill in 2003 that would have capped awards for pain and suffering at $250,000.

Comments
41

41 Responses to “Santorum Swings Both Ways”

leftinthewest.com » Dogs and Cats says:

[...] , however, is a bit more interesting. Jon, at ThinkProgress.org, in a post entitled “Santorum Swings Both Ways” points out that Sen. Rick Santorum testified at his wife’s malpra [...]
March 29th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
Jon says:

Sounds like Mr. No Man-on-Dog Lovin’ has joined Bill Frist and Tom Delay in the Tort Reform Hall of Shame.
March 29th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Tony says:

Well, since Rick and Karen paid the high insurance premiums that covered the high cost of the doctor’s malpractice insurance, they perfectly with in their rights to seek the most they are entitled to.
March 29th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
kindness says:

I’m sorry but the headline & highlighted items (a doulbe entandre(?)) in the article made me think of Dan Savage’s creation of a new word, sanitorum. I won’t get into the specifics, but it is funny in a bawdy way. Please excuse me for expressing my juvinile side.
March 29th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Bones says:

If only the American public paid more attention to these hucksters.
March 29th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Thom says:

Tony notes: “since Rick and Karen paid the high insurance premiums . . . they perfectly with in their rights to seek the most they are entitled to.”

You’ve got me stumped. Don’t know if this is super-clever satire, or some quasi-libertarian attempt at rebuttal.

I’m not sure what you mean by “entitled to.” Not quite how the law works in this instance.

Likewise, I also don’t quite know to make of “Rick and Karen paid”–as opposed to everyone else with insurance? And does this mean that patients without medical insurance should have no rights under law? New doctrine to me.

Furthermore, since we’re at this, it’s the medical professionals who pay high premiums for malpractice insurance. The argument more properly is that these costs can–and must–get passed along to the consumers / patients.

Hence the perceived need for tort reform in cases of medical malpractice: the sort of caps that Santorum now supports. Proponents claim that such will result in lower insurance costs, better service and lower costs to patients, and so on.

Fair enough in theory.

But in practice the evidence has not been overwhelming. It just seems to translate into higher profits for insurance companies, not better care or lower prices to individual consumers / patients.

The burden of proof in this case, it seems to me, remains on the reformers. More theory about “market forces” is hardly proof enough-particularly when those “forces” are the artifacts of special interest legislation and not the result of open and transparent processes.

I suspect you might know the work of Lew Rockwell, whom I suspect might agree with you here at least in theory.

But I would encourage you-and every other visitor to ThinkProgress-to check out Rockwell’s Which Way for Liberty?

He suggests in part that the libertarian right has tolerated (in his words) “red-state fascism” in part because of a seemingly favorable economic policies.

I’d go much further than that. I’d say that (1) many libertarians have betrayed the core values of their philosophy; and (2) that rightist libertarian complicity has aided and abetted people like Santorum: people dedicating their political lives to transform our nation into a theocratic police state, albeit one nominally capitalist but in truth an oligarchy of special interests in which no freedom-market or otherwise-may be exercised.

So if you are a libertarian, Tony, please stop doing theory and start looking around you at the reality.

Or, if what you wrote was brilliant satire, well, you sure fooled me.
March 29th, 2005 at 4:28 pm
Samantha says:

I am from Pennsylvania, and Santarium (not the save as Savage), has been doing this for years. It doesn’t surprise me, hopefully Casey will win the Senate election. Santorum does not care unless it is affects him. But when someone else does it, they make it seem as if the Apocalypse has arrived. Oh wait, it already has.
March 29th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Pennsylvania says:

You haven’t mentioned that our junior Senator from Pennsylvania filed the lawsuit in Virginia – clear proof he doesn’t live in Pennsylvania as required to be the junior Senator. We should begin to refer to him as Senator Carpetbagger.
March 29th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
L.B. Albert says:

Suggest you post entire article from Post Gazette Dec 11,1999. Santorum testified his wife might not be able to compaign for him because of permanent back pain and numbness in one leg. Funny it didn’t keep her from
bearing at least two more children.
March 29th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
karenas says:

Santorum’s wife’s lawsuit is just one of hundreds of examples of the hypocrisy gone willd gang. When is the public going to wake up?
Delay’s family sued a manufacturer and distributer of a faulty coupling device Daddy Delay used in his backyard theme park ride that crashed and caused him to become a vegetable. Not only did the Delay family pull the plug, but they sued for punitive damages.
We need to find out all of the law suits filed by the hypocrites plus how many of them pulled the plug on family members.
March 30th, 2005 at 10:46 am
Tony says:

Thom,

Thanks for your reply. I was basically arguing that Santorum was not being hypocritical. I think a person can disagree with a law but still take advantage of it while it is still on the books.

For example, a person (politician) can want to repeal a certain tax deduction, but I don’t think it’s hypocritical if they claim it on their tax return.

What would be hypocritical is if Santorum argued for a higher cap on malpractice awards during his wife’s ordeal but then argued for a lower cap now.
March 30th, 2005 at 11:17 am
David says:

If he’s consistently THIS hypocritical, maybe we should subpoena his pooch, unless social services has already removed Rover from the home.
March 30th, 2005 at 11:39 am
SpongeBob says:

Keep spreadin’ the santorum! (aka “the frothy mixture”)

“Hypocrite” doesn’t even begin to describe this . . . this . . . infected boil on the ass of progress . . .
March 30th, 2005 at 11:41 am
Erik says:

No tony arguing for tort reform and caps of 250k while suing for 500k is hypocritical. Perhaps you need a dictionary.
March 30th, 2005 at 11:52 am
Brother William says:

Rick concerns me in that he doesn’t practice the fundamental belief of Freedom for All (straight-gay) Citizens set forth in our US Constitution. He seems to allow Rome to dictate his stance and not the Document he swore to defend upon taking office, or the whole citizen base he represents. Most of the Congressional Body does the same. I worry about the future looking at the folks.
March 30th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
David Strong says:

Greg Abbott, Attorney General of Texas, did exactly the same thing. The accident that has him wheelchair-bound paid him millions of dollars; he has been vociferous in fight for caps on damages.
March 30th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
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March 30th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
common sense says:

I am shocked,shocked I tell ya that Rick Santorum (R-PA/VA) would want the best medical care for his wife,but dent it for everyone else. OOPS I forgot,Man-Dog is another FREAKIN’ HYPOCRITE. Sounds to me that Mrs.Man-dog has scaitica,which is quite painful,(I had it through most of 1982) and it hurts,but I’m sure that Mrs.Santorum has the best medical doctors her husband could buy so she can be back on the campaign trail to insure that the Santorum’s get the best medical treatments available,and you and I pay for it. By the way,how did Man-Dog get into Terri Schiavo’s hospice room the other night? One of the last people on planet Earth that I would allow in my room would be him.
March 31st, 2005 at 9:20 am
David R. Anselm, Jr. says:

Even worse than the obvious hypocrisy here, is the fact that patients are finding a growing trend, which is discriminating aginst patients in general in our court system. I sought legal help in an HMO malpractice issue I had concerning a serious misguided medical judgement made by an HMO, and was told my case was hampered by my AIDS disgnosis, and I was told, juries are not finding in favor of AIDS paitents these days, and though my case was compelling, the evidence clearly showed my claim to be accurate, the lawyers told me a jury would like me, and find me a credible witness, however with malpractice tort reform, and the rabid rights misleading argument as to why doctors now pay so much for malpractice, this has all fostored a new atmosphere designed to demonize the patient, regardless of real malpractice, and also take in to cnsideration your life expectancy prior to considering the ruling, so a lawyer actually said to my face a jury would probably say, he has AIDS, and was probably already messed up? (I guess the condition I was in prior to this event doesn’t count now?) They said a jury would no doubt think my actions were an attempt to make someone pay for my diagnosis, which I must say in my twenty years of living with HIV, I have yet to blame anyone, including the source of infection. This led him to conclude that it would not be the law firms best financial interest to represent me. This may fly right now with AIDS, and the Gay marriage issue, et al. After all these are not easy topics but what happens when an end stage cancer patient wants to file a complaint regarding a doctor not telling her about a lump on her breast that the doctor failed to mention for a year or so after it was discovered, and could be treated, but wasn’t since she was probably going to get that sick anyway reasoned the HMO regarding the treatment that could have been done during that time she didn’t know about it, it is expensive, so
why take on the expense of extending her life span? Are we all ready for the court to say it is just her misfortune? Several law firms confirmed this information, including the AIDS Law Project in Philadelphia. So the consequenses of real malpractice will soon be just the risk a person takes when seeking safe healthcare, and if there happens to be a serious screw up, we should all have prepared for it advance. I am not kidding this is actually what happened to me, and where I personally see this headed. I have worked in the medical community most of my adult life, so I have at least a clue about this type of trend. Nothing good will come out of it. It isn’t just the collosal hypocrisy. The ramifications surrounding this thought pattern are damaging in ways we haven’t even considered yet. Personally I feel pretty good simply regaining my health, but I doubt this is the only time such an action has taken place, so regarding your futures, think about this. They have gotten away with it here, so a precident has already been set. I am OK with living well is the best revenge, but are you?
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Ben Glass says:

The documents from Santorum’s medical malpractice lawsuit in Virginia are available at http://vamedmal.com/library/?Type=1#catC84

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Santorum Swings Both Ways

Santorum Swings Both Ways

41 Responses to “Santorum Swings Both Ways”

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