Ten-time New York Times bestselling author Ann Coulter is furious at President Obama’s National Institute of Health (NIH), and for good reason. The NIH refuses to release the name and immigration status of an Indian foreigner being treated for tuberculosis in an American hospital.
“A female patient with an extremely hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis is being treated at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington D.C., and federal and state officials are now tracking down hundreds of people who may have been in contact with her,” NBC News’ Maggie Fox wrote. “The woman traveled to at least three states before she sought treatment from a U.S. doctor. While TB is not easily caught by casual contact, extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB is so dangerous that health officials will have to make a concerted effort to warn anyone who may be at risk.”
Scary, huh? Even worse– this deadly strain of TB, as NBC News pointed out, has only a thirty to fifty percent chance of survival, even with the most up-to-date American medicine.
“I see why they won’t give out her name—at least until the U.S. taxpayer is forced to pay for her nearly half-million dollar treatment,” Coulter said in an email late Monday. “If we’re paying, we get her name. But why won’t the government tell us if she’s an immigrant—i.e. whether government policy brought a drug resistant disease to our shores?
Whether government policy brought this woman here or not, now it’s the taxpayers’ problem.
