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The GOP's Health SolutionDr. Tom Coburn tells the wife of a brain-injury victim to suck it up.

By Timothy NoahPosted Friday, Aug. 28, 2009, at 1:02 PM ET

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Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is a medical doctor; his press releases frequently refer to him not as "Sen. Coburn" but as "Dr. Coburn." He is also a fervent opponent of Obamacare. Coburn purports to favor an alternative bill so similar to the Democrats' own that one can't help wondering whether his opposition is mere partisan posturing. Another possibility is that Coburn is insincere when he claims to support any change to the current system.

Evidence for the latter is an exchange between Coburn and a weeping constituent who said at an Aug. 24 town hall meeting that her health insurance wouldn't cover rehabilitation for her husband, who suffered a traumatic brain injury. Writing in the New Republic's health care blog, the Treatment, Harold Pollack*, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, said that when he saw this clip neither he nor his wife, a clinical nurse specialist, "could … believe what we were watching."

Neither could I. Here's a transcript:

Q: Sen. Coburn, we need help. My husband has traumatic brain injury. His health insurance will not cover him to eat and drink. And what I need to know is: Are you going to help him? Where he can eat and drink? We left the nursing home, and they told us we are on our own. He left with a feeding tube. I have been working with him, but I'm not a speech pathologist, a professional that takes six years for a masters', and I'm trying to get him to eat and drink again [inaud].
A: Well, I think—first of all, yeah. We'll help. The first thing we will do is to see what we can do, individually, to help you, through our office. But the other thing that is missing in this debate is us as neighbors, helping people that need our help. [Applause.] You know we tend to ... [Applause.] The idea that the government is a solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.

Pollack, his wife, and Philip Pizzo, dean of Stanford Medical School, found Coburn's answer to be deeply disturbing. I did, too, of course. But what truly shocked and depressed me was not Coburn's let-'em-eat-cake response but the fact that it wasn't met in the room with a collective sharp intake of breath. Instead, Coburn received two quite robust bursts of applause. I have no idea how Congress and the White House can possibly sell health care reform to people like that.

Watch the exchange below:

Correction, Sept. 1, 2009: An earlier version of this column misspelled Harold Pollack's surname. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

How to sell health care reform to "people like that": You don't. You just pass the best bill you can get.

The completely unpersuadable will blame any problem they have on the bill. The rational and persuadable will see that government isn't killing their grandparents. The left will realize they've had a major victory after a while.

All the angst over this bill is short term.

-- blueshift
(To reply, click here)

"People like that?" Are you serious? As a resident of Oklahoma who voted for both Barak Obama and Sen. Coburn, I feel qualified to respond to this post by saying that while I am personally for health reform, there is a strong tradition here in the Midwest (that's 'flyover country' to you coastal elites) of helping one another through local churches, which have strong community and individual outreach programs. The reason there wasn't a "sharp intake of breath" at Senator Coburn's statements is because, frankly, helping one another as neighbors is the way we're used to doing things here.

In addition to a strong culture of compassion, there is also a strong distrust of government and government programs. I hope that Obama's administration is more adept than the author of this piece at overcoming the apprehensions of the red state citizens regarding health care reform.

-- joy_ryde
(To reply, click here)

I think Coburn was being deceptive and Noah obtuse. Coburn knows his constituents (and presumably Coburn himself) value self reliance and helping their neighbors. So he praised those qualities as a dodge to the question of insuring these sorts of cases. Clearly people helping each other out has been failing as a model for this woman and even if some sort of sustainable communal effort was made to help her, she is just one example. Noah missed that those people were applauding deeply held values, not the lack of a real answer.

-- blueshift
(To reply, click here)

I'm neither coastal, nor elite. Arizona is not a coast. But I understand the "you people" reaction. This is what "we" hear in the exchange:

Citizen: "What will you do to help my husband?"

Senator: "Nothing." Cue applause.

Saying "My office will look into that" means "Nothing" because maybe he will and maybe it will help, but it is certainly not a scalable solution that helps America at all. Saying "neighbors" means "Nothing" because neighbors may not be inclined/qualified to help and are most likely prohibited by law from providing unlicensed health care. And yet, applause. From the same people who scream "Socialism" and "Death Panels". It leads "us" to think "I cannot talk to these people. They do not use language and reasoning in any way I understand."

-- BSG-075
(To reply, click here)

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