I’m torn over whether sitting senators should be permitted to work outside of their official responsibilities while serving in the Senate. At this point, thanks to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), it’s become an interesting political debate.
Is it good for the republic that serving in Congress must be treated as a full-time job?
Newly elected Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma thinks not. And Coburn, who is also a physician, has already announced he will challenge a long-standing rule that bars him from continuing to practice medicine once he takes the oath of office Tuesday.
Coburn remained a practicing obstetrician when he served in the House in the 1990s, after crafting a deal whereby he wouldn’t profit financially from the work. Now he wants to do the same thing while in the Senate, and plans to challenge the chamber’s rules that forbid it.
I can see merit on both sides of this one. Some think lawmakers would be in better touch with real-life concerns if they worked outside of the Hill. That may be true. Others note that senators get paid well to work full-time for their constituents, so lawmakers shouldn’t divide their time. That’s compelling, too.
But while this debate goes back and forth, I can’t get around the person at the center of the controversy. Maybe lawmakers should be able to work outside of Congress, but I’d be far more comfortable if Coburn’s medical history were investigated thoroughly before he got near another patient.
Let’s not forget, there’s a pretty serious cloud hanging over Coburn’s medical record.
According to records obtained by Salon, Coburn filed an apparently fraudulent Medicaid claim in 1990, which he admitted in his own testimony in a civil malpractice suit brought against him 14 years ago by a former female patient. The suit alleged that Coburn had sterilized her without her consent. It eventually was dismissed after the plaintiff failed to appear for the trial. In his sworn testimony, Coburn admitted he sterilized the then 20-year-old woman without securing her written consent as required by law. He blamed the omission on a clerical error, but maintained that he had her oral consent for the procedure. (Salon has been unable to contact the woman and is withholding her name out of respect for her privacy.) Coburn also revealed under oath that he had charged the procedure to Medicaid — despite knowing that Medicaid, also known as Title 19, does not cover the cost of sterilization for anyone under age 21.
Subsequently, the woman involved came forward — and explained a different side of the story than what Coburn claimed.
A woman who claimed in a lawsuit 13 years ago that the Republican Senate candidate here, a family physician, sterilized her without her consent came forward Thursday to stand by her story, throwing one of the most competitive Senate races in the country into further turmoil.
Her voice shaking at times, Angela Plummer said that while Tom Coburn saved her life during a 1990 surgery to remove a fallopian tube in which a fetus had lodged, she was “stunned” to learn that he had also removed her remaining good tube.
“Dr. Tom Coburn sterilized me without my consent — verbal or written — and I know he’s stating that he got oral consent. That is not true,” Plummer said at a news conference. “I’m not up here to smear him. I’m up here because I wanted to have more children, and he took that away from me.”
There can and should be a legitimate discussion over congressional ethics rules as they relate to outside employment. But in light of his record, Coburn seems like the wrong senator to blaze a new trail.