HEALTH WARS: A NEW HOPE

So, it looks to me like the health care debate took an interesting turn recently. Outside of Teddy's unfortunate demise, I've noticed a little bit of a sea change in some recent town hall meetings. Before I get into that, however, I want to repeat my disgust for those right wing organizations and satanic insurance companies that encourage clueless nutjobs to crash real health care discussions and yell things like "I want my country back" or "Obama is a Nazi." I mean, I'm all for a constructive argument, but what do these kind of comments have to do with anything remotely health care related?

Okay, back to my original point ... I was perusing The Huffington Post the other day and saw the headline McCain Evicts Angry Woman From Town Hall ... Honestly, I almost didn't read the thing, because I was sure the woman in question was probably ejected for stating her support for the public option or something of that nature. But it turns out that the post was actually quite interesting. Here's a couple quotes I really liked:

After McCain opened it up to questioning, one man angrily pointed at him and asked the senator why he deserves a better health care plan than him.

"I'm trying to get it for you," McCain told him. "We'll do it for you. We'll make it affordable and available to you."

Other audience members in the crowd of 2,000 told McCain about their medical problems, such as HIV and multiple sclerosis.

McCain urged them he would fight for health care reform but reiterated his opposition to President Barack Obama's plan to create a government option to compete with private insurers, arguing that it would be the eventual end of private insurers in the U.S ...

... When McCain was trying to answer questions from reporters after the town hall, one audience member yelled at him that he gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies every year.

In a voice of feigned surprise, McCain said "Really? I didn't know that."

So, here's my question: What exactly are you trying to do to help those people, Senator McCain? Because all I see from you and your party is a group of selfish politicians agreeing to vote against any Democratic proposal and going out of their way to protect private insurance companies that (frankly) could care less about the people of Arizona.

Anyway, after reading that, I was like, "Finally, some genuine anger about real health care issues!" But wait: it gets better ... Not too long before McCain's town hall, there was actually another one held by Senator Tom Coburn where a woman in the audience cried when she told her story of a sick relative and health costs. Coburn answered with the following:

"What's missing from the debate is us as neighbors helping people who need help," he said.

I think the absolute absurdity of this was expressed quite well by a blogger named Kitty commenting on another site:

How's that, senator? Is the solution to throw a bake sale every time one of our neighbors gets sick? How many cupcakes will it take to defray the cost of a heart transplant? How many cookies do we need to bake to pay for a child fighting leukemia? Should a neighbor stop by to hook up a patient to the chemotherapy bags? Maybe we should do away with Medicare and get all the grandmas in the kitchen cooking up goodies to pay for all these health costs, including their own.

Very well said.

So, here's the thing ... When Republicans are confronted with real people fighting real health problems, they clearly have no solutions and no compassion. Let's just hope that a few more of these kind of town halls make people wake up to that fact.