Rick Santorum put Mitt Romney on the defensive over his Massachusetts health care law with a fiery attack at Thursday’s Jacksonville debate.
After Romney described his health reforms and noted his pledge to repeal Obamacare, Santorum shot back that Romney said “government-run top down medicine is working well in Massachusetts and he supports it.”
“That’s not what I said,” Romney replied. But Santorum kept rolling.
“Think about what that means going up against Barack Obama, who you are going to claim, ‘well, it doesn’t work and we should repeal,'” he said. “He’s going to say, ‘Wait a minute, governor. You said it works well in Massachusetts.’ Folks — we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom.”
Almost confirming Santorum’s point, Romney responded by defending the aspects of his own law that were most directly reproduced in the Affordable Care Act: a mandate to require people to have insurance and a subsidized exchange in which individuals can choose between private health care plans.
“Rick, I make enough mistakes in what I said not for you to add more mistakes to what I said,” he began. “I didn’t say I’m in favor of top down government-run health care…If you don’t want to buy insurance, then you have to help pay for the cost of the state picking up your bill because under federal law if someone doesn’t have insurance, then we have to care for them in the hospitals, give them free care. We said no more free riders. We are insisting on personal responsibility.”
Santorum asked Romney to clarify if Massachusetts residents had a “requirement to buy health care,” to which he responded: “Everyone has an requirement to either buy insurance or pay the state for the cost of providing them free care.” Santorum accused the requirement of forcing citizens to pay a fine because health care costs were still rising too fast to afford insurance.
“First of all, it’s not worth getting angry about,” Romney said. “Secondly, 98% of the people have insurance. And so the idea that more people are free riding the system is simply impossible.”
Santorum didn’t let up.
“Your mandate is no different than Barack Obama’s mandate,” he said. “It is the same mandate. You take over 100%, just like he takes over 100%, requires the mandate. The same fines that you put in place in Massachusetts are fines that he puts in place in the federal level.”
Despite long being viewed as a central vulnerability to his candidacy, Romney’s rivals have rarely been able to effectively attack him on Romneycare in debates. Santorum’s answer, which was much more passionate and aggressive than past efforts by GOP candidates, clearly made Romney more uncomfortable than usual.
