Rick Santorum, unhinged or calculating? (Jim Young/Reuters)
Oh,
good lord.
What we will go to in a very short period of time, the next two years, a little less than 50 percent of the people in this country depend on some form of federal payment, some form of government benefit to help provide for them. After Obamacare, it will not be less than 50 percent; it will be 100 percent.
That's Rick Santorum, filling the paranoid crazy vacuum in the GOP presidential field left by the departure of
Michele Bachmann.
The Washington Post's fact checker deals with the reality behind his claims. Census figures do show that a little less than half of the population lives in a household in which someone receives government benefits. For example, there are lots of disabled children who are covered by Medicaid. There are plenty of other children covered by SCHIP, while the rest of the family doesn't receive a benefit. There are households where one member is a senior, on Social Security and Medicare. But, for the math (or truth) challenged like Santorum, a household does not equal a person.
As for the claim that "Obamacare" will mean every single person in the United States will be receiving government benefits, I want some of whatever he's smoking that turned partial subsidies for some low- and middle-income people to buy insurance on a health exchange into a single-payer system covering 100 percent of the population.
WaPo is very polite about it, calling his claim "absurd" and an "error." But what it is is a lie, motivated either by delusional paranoia or calculated fear-mongering from a rabid ideologue.
Ladies and gentleman, one of your frontrunners in the Republican race for the presidency.