Santorum in '93: Feds Should Fix Health System

Rick Santorum has criticized Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on health care, but it turns out Santorum once supported government involvement in health care himself—in his own words, "to alter that marketplace to make it work better." Santorum gave an interview during a heated senatorial campaign in 1993 in which he expressed a philosophy that extended beyond the health care issue: "I take a much more proactive position in government in solving problems than most Republicans, because I believe government has a role."

Santorum said he even approached the first President Bush in 1991, telling him "that health care was gonna be the big issue and that we had to take responsibility for trying to solve this problem." Mother Jones, which dug up the interview transcript, notes that Santorum now depicts himself as anti-"Obamacare" hardliner who (as he put it) "was always for having the government out of the health care business." The Santorum camp didn't respond to requests for comment. (More Rick Santorum 2012 stories.)