Coburn Responds to Gerson

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Over at Real Clear Politics, Tom Coburn responds to Michael Gerson’s “contemptuous and factually loose” Washington Post column that smears the “Coburn seven” for not caring about AIDS victims enough:

Part of Gerson’s moral outrage is focused on my controversial stance that AIDS treatment dollars be spent on treatment. I want to preserve PEPFAR’s original formula that sends at least 55 percent of all dollars to AIDS treatment so widows and orphans and actual patients, not program officers and consultants, will be the primary beneficiaries of the program. This formula is made all the more important because the new authorization calls for a three-fold increase in funding from $15 billion over five years to $50 billion over five years. Moreover, this smart and well-designed policy, which Gerson once supported but now scorns, is a major reason why PEPFAR has been a Marshall Plan-like response, rather than a Katrina-like response, to the AIDS crisis in Africa.

In a review of Gerson’s book, Matthew Continetti thoroughly diagnosed the problem with Gersonism:

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