The fascinating thing is that some Republicans will insist that, in spite of all their budget cuts and the fact that the federal deficit is at its lowest point in six years, government is still too big. They argue that if the government isn’t handling the Ebola situation well, it’s because government is too large, or its priorities are misplaced.
Just look at the narrative being spread by conservative outlets and tweeters that the National Institutes of Health might have come up with an Ebola vaccine by now had it not been spending money on research about why lesbians are generally more obese than gay men. Of course, they ignore the inconvenient context: That study is only 0.08% of the much larger amount the NIH spends researching obesity in general — and obesity remains a greater threat to most Americans’ health than Ebola.
To take another example, Republicans have spent the last several years condemning the role of government in health care. Now they’re demanding government step up and play an intensified role. Yet consider that Thomas Eric Duncan showed up at a Dallas hospital with symptoms of Ebola, but was turned away with just antibiotics and some Tylenol. He didn’t have health insurance. But surely if this outbreak teaches us anything, it is that our health depends on everyone have access to affordable, quality medical care. True, the CDC needs to revise its guidelines and procedures for Ebola. But in Dallas we saw very clearly that a private health system won’t be able to save us. That’s why it’s called public health.
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