Yesterday, right wing extremist, Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, held a town hall in Oklahoma City. He expected the normal cheerleading by seniors on Medicare idiotically decrying government health care, but it didn't all go quite according to script. One woman, clearly distraught, shocked the crowd with a dose of reality. As she described her husband's condition, who has traumatic brain injury and can't even eat or drink, burst into tears describing how their insurance company has refused coverage, showing that she is clearly at the end of her rope. The crowd shifted uncomfortably as she sobbed while telling her story. Coburn's response was...well, have a look for yourself:
Coburn, caught with his rhetoric in the cookie jar, stupidly stammered about "neighbors helping neighbors." "Neighbors helping neighbors"? To treat traumatic brain injury? What? Composing himself and falling back into character, he couldn't resist lecturing this distraught woman that the "idea that our government is the solution to our problems is inaccurate". Yes, according to Coburn, the government should step aside while a private insurance company Death Panel decides this woman's husband should die. On the spot in front of a couple hundred sets of eyes, Coburn did agree to have his staff "see what we can do, individually". How generous. As Rick Sanchez at CNN appropriately put it,
Clearly, Coburn couldn't gloss over the searing reality of our failed healthcare system slapping him in the face, even as he actively works to kill the very reform that would help this woman and her husband. His response merely confirms his heartless ideology and his support of corporate profits over the welfare of his constituents. Coburn continues to falsely claim that the "free market" is the only solution to the health care crisis, completely ignoring people like this poor woman who can't buy health insurance for any price. Millions and millions of Americans are suffering everyday while this Neanderthal peddles his talking points, all the while taking money from the very companies who stand to benefit from killing reform.
I have only one question for the good Senator....
What the hell is wrong with you?
Coburn, caught with his rhetoric in the cookie jar, stupidly stammered about "neighbors helping neighbors." "Neighbors helping neighbors"? To treat traumatic brain injury? What? Composing himself and falling back into character, he couldn't resist lecturing this distraught woman that the "idea that our government is the solution to our problems is inaccurate". Yes, according to Coburn, the government should step aside while a private insurance company Death Panel decides this woman's husband should die. On the spot in front of a couple hundred sets of eyes, Coburn did agree to have his staff "see what we can do, individually". How generous. As Rick Sanchez at CNN appropriately put it,
"He just told her to come and see him. Isn't he the government? By the way, after helping her, what will he do about the other 46,999,999 who don't have insurance, and the thousands upon thousands of Americans who say they do have insurance but like her, they're not getting covered?"Amen, Rick.
Clearly, Coburn couldn't gloss over the searing reality of our failed healthcare system slapping him in the face, even as he actively works to kill the very reform that would help this woman and her husband. His response merely confirms his heartless ideology and his support of corporate profits over the welfare of his constituents. Coburn continues to falsely claim that the "free market" is the only solution to the health care crisis, completely ignoring people like this poor woman who can't buy health insurance for any price. Millions and millions of Americans are suffering everyday while this Neanderthal peddles his talking points, all the while taking money from the very companies who stand to benefit from killing reform.
I have only one question for the good Senator....
What the hell is wrong with you?
Thank the lord we don't live in Oklahoma, where they are represented in the Senate by TWO obviously crazy people.
Yesterday Coburn's colleague, James Inhofe, said, speaking of the health reform bill:"I don't have to read it, or know what's in it. I'm going to oppose it anyways,"
We can stop the search. We have finally found somebody dumber than John Cornyn.
Other people have noticed, too. Fascinating how a party that wanted to privatize Medicare altogether and ultimately cut its funding has now supposedly emerged as its "champion." Maybe they're hoping the angered constituents who'll buy that crap without any further investigation or memory of the past will be dead by the time they get around to trying to decimate it again.
Am I the only one who has noticed the complete flip flop by the GOP on Medicare? Can someone point out to me one Republican congressional candidate who campaigned last year on full funding for Medicare? Yet that is exactly what the GOP, through Michael Steele, is now promoting.
Full funding? With no cuts, no tax increases and no deficit spending? Pretty neat trick. I wonder how he intends to pull it off? Answer - he doesn't. Steele understands the average Republican voter pretty well. Details are lost on them. All they know is that granny will now be covered for all of her expenses for as long as she lives - and that all of that care will no one a single dime. It's magic!
I'm very certain that the medical bills for this woman's husband's care will very quickly climb into the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars, and within a few years exceed a million dollars. It is 18 months since my wife suffered a TBI (traumatic brain injury), and the medical bills are well in excess of $500,000 at this point and climbing. I've been told repeatedly by health care professionals along the way that we have "good insurance", and indeed, the vast majority of our expenses have been covered, but I have repeatedly run into denials of one type or another. And the timetable for moving from hospital to hospital, treatment level to treatment level, has been set by the insurance company every step of the way, not by the doctors treating her. As things stand now, care is rationed every minute of every day. And it's done because our health is treated as though it were a commodity to be bought, sold and profited upon. How quintessentially American.
It distresses me to no end.
What appalled me even more than the (sadly) predictable response from the charming senator was the audience's response to the senator's words.
How, and where, did we ever manage to go so wrong as to produce such numbers of people in our society?
but, but, think of the SOCIALISM....(eek)
I have a son with a traumatic brain injury. 13 years ago insurance was good enough that he made it through 2 weeks in a coma in Hermann's NICU, and 4 weeks of intense rehab in TIRR.
Neighbors helping neighbors? I could have gotten 20 casseroles and my son would have been just as dead and we would have been just as bankrupt. But with health care, even though he is on disability, he is married, has a wonderful son, and is relatively stable and happy.
Were it to be now? Well, your last sentence says it all, Bob.
Bob, your last comment sums up the whole Republican opposition to any and all healthcare reform about as well as can be done. What the fuck is wrong with these people indeed. Just disgusting.
The Senator Tom Coburn types in Congress are making me freakin' crazy!
What will it take to make them see -- really see -- what hardhearted bastards they have become?
"The tree of corporate profitability must occasionally be watered with the blood of the sick and the poor"
Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma's real god is money. He doesn't care about this woman or anyone like her.
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"...and we can use to use our government, the one we run by our votes, as the mechanism"
Having homonyms for breakfast. What I meant was "we can choose to use our government..."
I think the term "heartless bastard" might be appropriate here. And then suggesting that her neighbors get together and help her out. Maybe she can go live in a poor house run by her church after the medical bills send her into bankruptcy.
But in his own way, his neighbors helping neighbors point may have been correct. The right wing has effectively substituted the word "government" for "society". We as a society can help each other out - we can choose do so, and we can use to use our government, the one we run by our votes, as the mechanism. Same way we chose as a society to keep seniors out of abject poverty with Social Security, or to keep them healthier with Medicare. It was us providing the care, not government.
Maybe that's too logical - and too factually correct - for the angry mob to understand.
Jefe, I hope you send a letter with that exact question, in those exact words, to that piece of shit senator.
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Insurance companies are dooming people (hey, the CEO's gotta get his bonus somewhere!) and these idiot assholes are agreeing with it? Talk about voting against their own interests.
They don't want government in their healthcare? Tell that to Michael Schiavo. The government - ALL THE WAY TO GEORGE FUCKING BUSH - got right in the middle of his wife's healthcare, didn't they?
It's time to get the healthcare reform passed. And now, more than ever, we need to do it. And I hope we can honor Sen. Kennedy's life by passing the legislation he was so in favor of.
It's about time one of these Congressional nincompoops got hit in the face by the cold water of reality.
Yeah... "come and see me..." but, to say we are the solution is inaccurate? Huh?? The neighbors helping neighbors thing sounds like Palin rhetoric. Come on Bob... don't you have a speech pathologist lying around you can loan her for a week or two, and Wombat and I will chip in some liquid food for his feeding tube and... well, you get the point.
BTW, RIP Ted Kennedy.