Rick Santorum may be out of the election, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the conversation. During a Thursday night interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Santorum slammed Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare initiative, a program that the presumptive presidential candidate has tried like hell to distance himself from.

One of Mitt Romney’s greatest challenges in the upcoming election will be to successfully hold the line against President Obama’s controversial Affordable Care Act whilst differentiating or re-directing away from his own similar healthcare initiatives in Massachusetts. Romney has soft-pedaled what is perhaps the greatest strike against his self-proclaimed conservatism, but people just keep bringing it up and making it it haunt him. During the interview, one of Morgan’s questions posed to Santorum truck this very chord. How can Romney criticize ObamaCare when it was modeled upon his own healthcare reforms in Massachusetts? “It hasn’t worked in Massachusetts,” replied Santorum.

“Health care costs in Massachusetts are number one in the country,” he added. “They have a series of problems with people who decide to take the tax, in other words, pay the fine, instead of buying insurance, because it’s actually cheaper, particularly younger and healthier people.”

Santorum did defend his one-time bitter rival, saying that he believed Romney had learned his lesson, reports NY Daily. “What he has said is they did some things right and they did some things wrong. And he’s learned from those mistakes. I’m using his language,” Santorum said.

Santorum’s comments also reflect one of the strongest criticisms against Obama’s healthcare reforms – that people will opt to pay the fines rather than receive coverage. Santorum continued to voice his perspective that ObamaCare will fail, and his evidence is Massachusetts, where that very thing is happening, notes the Atlantic Wire.

Clearly there’s no love lost between Santorum and Romney. In an interview earlier in the month, he criticized Romney for lacking “conviction” and “authenticity”, but said that casting his own vote for Romney over Obama is “clear choice for me,” citing Romney’s vow to repeal ObamaCare on day 1 of his presidency.