My question was the last one...

I'll do anything for school points. Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) came to Kilgore College to speak to health care students on topics concerning them yesterday. My instructor said she would give 40 points to all who went. Buddy, for a bird nest on the ground like that I joined about 75 other students in a lecture room in the nursing building.

I would not put Mr. Gohmert down as a slick political type, I have seen slicker, he is quite homespun without being country. As he talked he mentioned not allowing the U.S to subsidize the health care of other nations. He mentioned some kind of medical savings plan, something that's been around, but I was not familiar with it that people could use to pay for medical so that those in health care would be able to give the best services. He mentioned the danger he called it of socialized medicine and compared it to farmers he had seen in Russia who sat in the shade because it paid the same as being in the fields. He scared everyone and made a very distasteful face at the thought of nasty prescriptions made without QC that people might obtain from Mexico to counter high drug cost. Pulled out the old stem cell fears. Then he took questions.

After a few questions he had been going on right at one hour. I raised my hand. I asked:

"Rep Gohmert, from your comments about not wanting to contribute to the health care of other countries, and about the need for people to save and plan so they could pay adequately when they fall sick and the possibility that health care professionals might not do a good job or use the latest equipment leads me to believe that you are all in favor of providing health care only for those who can afford it. How would you, in your position as Congressman deal with some global pandemic or an epidemic in certain populations of this country if the people or nations involved could not pay?

He went to town answering that. (My comments in parenthases.) He told of trying to pass a bill that would withdraw aid to any country that did not vote with the U.S. in the United Nations for one year. He admitted that this bill had earned him the nick name of the meanest man in Washington. He claimed that all to often money given for aid by the U.S. propped up dictatorships. (We usually prop those up with guns don't we.) He did tout the use of charities if you wanted to help. (I don't know if he was trying to plant the idea that this guy who asked a difficult question was not helping in everyone's minds, Americans do not seem to give unless they get something.) He said it might be more effective for the U.S. to give aid through charities. (That sounds good.) Then he pulled the Christian card. (Was he infering that since I was bound to be on the other side I was not Christian?) Take care of the meek he said the Bible asks. (I thought that everything he just proposed was harmful to the meek.) He also stated that the U.S. gives more aid that anyone else in the world. (I count as my friends certain Catholic priests that often have spent 20-30 years in the third world. This is not what they report.)

He packed it in after that, thanks, he said and shook everyone's hand. Well most everyone's.

Outside my instructor said, "That was such a good question and he did not answer it. He had his own agenda and did not expect multi-national views." As they say in East Texas, she is not from around here. I replied, "How did you like the Christian thing, he said he was one and all he proprosed was not Christian at all." She said "No! It was not."

So there, I reported this to the best of my memory. The question might have actually been worded a bit different, the answer was quite long, but I think I captured it.

So to sum it up, I guess the meanest man in Washington nails it for some folks and gets the vote in some places. Not here.