Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK and “Dr. No,” has been taking lots of heat this week for his insistence that Senate proponents of the bill providing federally funded health care benefits and compensation to 9/11 first responders allow amendments to the measure designed to reduce its cost.

But Coburn’s resistence has yielded fruit in the form of a compromise that, among much else, reduces the measure’s estimated total cost from more than $6 billion to about $4.2 billion.