Repug Compassion Revealed

Shorter Senator Tom Coburn: "If you can't afford medical care, not only do you deserve to die, but your family deserves to suffer destitution."



Steve Benen explains:

We're probably past the point at which one concerned American asking one question at a single town-hall forum can change the nature of the larger health care debate. But this clip, posted by Zaid Jilani, struck me as both powerful and illustrative.

For those of you who can't watch clips from your work computers, CNN'sRick Sanchez aired an exchange yesterday between a woman desperate forhealth care assistance and Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma. The womanin the clip struggles to even speak through her tears, but sheexplains to her right-wing senator that her husband has traumaticbrain injuries. Their family's private insurer, she said, won't coversome of his treatments. "We left the nursing home," she said, "andthey told us we are on our own." She breaks down, pleading for help.

Coburn's response was fascinating. "Well, I think, first of all, yes, we will help," the senator said. "The first thing we will do is see what we can do individually to help you through our office. But the other thing that's missing in this debate is us as neighbors helping people that need our help."

When that generated some applause, the Oklahoman added, "The idea that the government is the solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement."

This struck me as interesting for a few reasons. The first, which Rick Sanchez noted to viewers, is that Coburn said his office would try to help this woman's family, right before saying government isn't the answer. Sanchez asked, "Isn't he the government?"

SNIP

Coburn's answer represents mindless, reflexive opposition to government, for opposition's sake. It's a worldview that's as shallow as it is destructive.

Is government intervention always the answer to every societal problem? Of course not. But health care is critically important -- literally, a life-or-death issue -- for just about every single person and family in the country. It's a basic public service -- not unlike police protection, fire departments, roads, or schools -- that every industrialized democracy manages to provide its citizens, expect us,
thanks to "leaders" like Coburn and those who share his ideology.

Benen, as usual, is way too forgiving of repug I-got-mine-fuck-you displays. What is horrific here is two-fold:

First, no one is calling Coburn and all his repug/Blue Dog fellow travelers out on their Anti-American belief that everyone who is not rich, white and male is sub-human.

Second, because no one has called them out on that for the last 30 years, people have forgotten the obvious: "neighbors helping neighbors" IS government. We all contribute, through taxes, to the commonweal so that we all benefit from public spending on things we all need. Things too expensive to buy on our own, and too essential to leave to the vicious cannibalism of the market. Like health care.

They used to teach this in elementary school.