Saturday, January 7, 2012

An open letter to Rick Santorum

Dear Mr. Santorum -

You have presented yourself, in your run for the presidency, as a candidate of religious and moral values. I recently saw you quoted as saying that "the left has a religion, too. It’s just not based on the Bible. It’s based on the religion of self." [David Brooks, New York Times column, January 3]

I try to pay you the compliment of believing that you are well intentioned. Just yesterday, though, you were further quoted as telling the mother of a son who had survived cancer that people with pre-existing conditions should pay more for health care coverage because they make poor health care choices. [Igor Volsky, http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/01/06/399357/santorum-to-mother-of-cancer-survivor-sick-are-to-blame-for-their-pre-existing-conditions-insurers-should-charge-them-more/?mobile=nc]

I can speak to your comments from a position of unique and painful authority. My wife recently died after decades of steadily worsening health due to radiation treatment she received for a brain tumor at 23. Without my group health insurance, she would have been unable to obtain any coverage at all.

Your position reminds me of comments made by some of the people at her parents' church, who told them that she must have done something terribly wrong for God to punish her in that way.

I'm sure you would qualify your statement, as you did to the mother of the son who had survived cancer, by assuring me that my wife did nothing wrong. Nevertheless, you are supporting a system that allows her and other innocent survivors of debilitating diseases to be treated as statistics and judged by whether they serve a corporate bottom line.

I urge you to consider the possibility that you are endorsing a position that has nothing to do with Biblical values, and everything to do with a societal ethos that makes everybody into a statistic and has rendered corporate profits more important than healing lives and saving souls. Perhaps our opponents' faults are always more visible than our own. From where I stand, though, you appear to be pursuing a religion of self with a single-minded intensity that is deeply offensive to many people who have been touched by serious illness.

Please back off and do some real soul-searching. You are causing genuine pain to people who have suffered much pain already. In doing so, you are undermining your claim to speak with moral authority, and are giving voice to the cruelest and ugliest forces in our public life: forces that are a profound threat to both religion and morality.

Sincerely,
Robin Wallace

7 comments:

  1. "Poor health care choices," like environmental and/or occupational exposures known to be associated with disease or being born with a genetic disorder or predisposition to disease.

    Example:

    International Agency for Research on Cancer Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans
    Painting, Fire-Fighting and Shiftwork
    http://apps.who.int/bookorders/anglais/detart1.jsp?sesslan=1&codlan=1&codcol=72&codcch=98

    ReplyDelete
  2. Using Mr. Santorum's flawed logic in this matter, I would like his input to the following scenario:

    What happens when deregulation of industry makes our air and water so toxic that it makes us sick? Who 'pays' for the cost of dealing with the health issues related to industry w/o regulation? Is the company that is polluting our environment going to pay for our medical expenses when we get sick as a result of the toxic air and water? Using Mr. Santorum's logic, the answer should be YES!!!! Who pays for government's and industries bad choices???? It certainly isn't the politicians that govern us!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, I agree.... beautifully written. You are kinder to him that I think he deserves. These people ALL need to do some soul searching as they are ALL members of the same religion....the religion of self.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you for writing this, Dr. Wallace. I agree completely and think you "hit the nail on the head." I also wanted to say I'm so sorry to hear about your wife; she was fortunate you have you as a companion.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really can't comment except to say that I agree totally with what you wrote. I am thinking of you daily and praying for your strength. God be with you all.

    ReplyDelete
  6. What he's proposing would make an already difficult health care system, impossible. As you explained about your late wife's situation, I understand completely. My sister had breast cancer in 2005. She never smoked, never drank alcohol and has been a vegetarian for 30+ years. She exercises daily. Had it not been for her husband's health insurance at the time, she could never have received care at Johns Hopkins. Unfortunately, the company he worked for closed the lab. They've had a difficult time getting insurance ever since the COBRA they paid for ran out. Rick Santorum is proposing a system that would essentially make it impossible for people with any type of pre-existing health condition to get health care. I wonder whether he'd feel that he should pay for all of the health care and custodial care for his own severely disabled daughter out of his pocket....This is the sort of moronic statement that republicans rush to make -- without thinking about whom it affects or what other repercussions there may be. It proves that the GOP is completely out of touch with mainstream America. Like you, Robin, statements like that make me seethe.

    ReplyDelete