The smiling Tea Party members in DC are, like their for-profit insurance industry friends, the real death panel. A horrible shutdown anecdote that The Atlantic pulls from The Wall Street Journal:
At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.Yes, seriously. Kids with cancer will be denied potentially lifesaving treatments because of the intransigence of assholes like Ted Cruz and cowards like John Boehner.
House Republicans have failed to stop Obamacare from going into effect so far, but sadly and ironically, their actions have prevented hundreds of people from getting healthcare from just one clinic.What moral authority is left in a society that sacrifices sick children for political points?