And an unethical doctor:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/13/coburn/Get the day pass. This article is worth it.
The future of GOP control of the Senate depends on Oklahoma Republican candidate Tom Coburn, a former doctor who has covered up a scandal from his past until now.
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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.
This previously unpublicized episode from his medical practice cuts to the heart of Coburn's political identity. He has built his congressional career on extreme gestures against government programs, exceeded in virulence only by his pronouncements on social issues, including advocating the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions under any circumstances other than those threatening the life of the mother. (And yet, as a doctor, he has performed abortions.) Oh, and did I mention he is pro-life? "I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life," he told AP last week.