David Cook(What's that? Oh, right.)
If the Koch brothers reach heaven, I wonder what God will say to them.
The two -- Koch and God -- seem so alien to one another. Incongruent. Dichotomous. The Koch brothers are the billionaire backers of Americans for Prosperity. God? More like Americans for Leprosy.
Last week, the Koch brothers became the most influential Tennesseans who aren't Tennesseans. Their hands lit the social dynamite that caused the implosion of Insure Tennessee, our state's hybrid plan to expand Medicaid health insurance to nearly 300,000 poor Tennesseans who don't have it.
The stage was set for success: A respected and popular Republican governor surrounded by a Republican-controlled legislature in a state populated with Republicans.
Gov. Bill Haslam's plan had market-driven principles. The state wasn't on the hook for any additional health care costs. The feds were paying, and when they weren't, hospitals promised to. According to polls, Tennesseans liked the plan.
Then the Koch brothers and their Americans for Prosperity got involved. Media. Social media. Political attacks. Propaganda. (Isn't this the definition of outside agitators?)
"When the legislators walked into a hearing Tuesday morning to debate the measure, they looked out from the dais to a room packed with more than 100 people wearing red 'Americans for Prosperity' T-shirts," reported NBC's Perry Bacon Jr.
Seven of 11 subcommittee members voted down Insure Tennessee. It's stunning, awful math, how such a tiny number of people can affect an entire state.
"The vote was one of the clearest illustrations of the increasing power of AFP and other conservative groups funded in part by the Koch brothers," Bacon wrote.
Insure Tennessee was like the third step-cousin, twice-removed, of the ACA. Even then, that was enough for the Kochs and AFP, which just proved itself more powerful than the Tennessee Republican Party.
The subcommittee vote revealed the ferocity of anti-Washington sentiment. I'd call it an act of soft secession.
"This is one of the most important news stories of the past decade," one friend said last week.
It's also the most illogical: Hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans will continue to pour their sick and uninsured bodies into emergency rooms, looking for help. Where is the economic leadership to help them?
More importantly, where is the mercy and grace?
Look at Jesus. He was a walking hospital. In the Gospel of Mark alone, he healed at least 10,000 people.
(That's my best guess. Some healings are individual, intimate and easy to count: The healing of the dying girl. The mother-in-law with the high fever. The bleeding woman. The man with the shrivelled hand. The lunatic. But others are massive. Some days, Jesus heals entire towns. "Wherever he went," Mark wrote, "they laid down their sick.")
Had Jesus been a health care provider, he would have delivered about $200 million in uncompensated health care.
(That's based on estimates that an average healing would cost $20,000. He healed folks with seizures, which we can interpret as epilepsy. Governing.com reports that the average provider cost for treating epilepsy in Tennessee is $19,000. Psychoses? $16,000. Infectious diseases? $108,000. Yes, I'm looking at you, leper by the roadside).
Jesus isn't the only physician archetype; all world religions establish an image of God-as-healer, not just Christianity. That means the God-to-human message delivered throughout most of history has been emphatically and repeatedly clear: Heal the sick. Take care of the poor.
Last week in Tennessee, the Kochs delivered a different message.
Who knew they had a bigger audience than God?
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.