SPEAKING OF DISCONTINUITY, John McCain's endorsement by conservative stalwart Senator Tom Coburn should be comforting to those on McCain's right -- but at a town hall event in Sumter yesterday, it served instead to put McCain's squishiness in starker relief.

Coburn showed up for this event only because his flight was canceled, but ended up doing a lot of talking during the Q&A. Coburn, who is a doctor, knows a whole lot about health care policy, and there were several questions about health care that McCain asked Coburn to chime in on.

The discussion got remarkably wonky, as Coburn got into the specifics of how the Ryan White Act funds HIV/AIDS treatment, how various reforms could control costs by encouraging preventative care, and why USAID isn't as effective as it should be at fighting disease in the third world.

McCain and Coburn had an especially telling exchange with a young woman who asked why poor people in the third world shouldn't have access to cheap generic drugs that American drug companies have patents on when those companies have their research and development subsidized by the government. Read more...

Labels: Decision '08, Sen. Tom Coburn