Nicholas Kristof wrote an excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times about some basic facts that have gotten lost in the vitriolic debate over healthcare reform. Specifically, he cites statistics from no less an authority than the American Medical Association that 62% of all personal bankruptcies are tied to healthcare bills. And of that percentage, an incredible 78% of those people had health insurance.

Kristof writes eloquently about how our current system breaks up families and, despite the absence of so-called “death panels” actually hastens or contributes to the deaths of as many as 18,000 people every year. To illustrate this, he writes about a loving couple who were forced to divorce in order to protect the wife’s retirement savings so that her ill husband could qualify for Medicaid. Their only other option would have been to spend down all their assets, leaving the wife penniless and caring for a husband with dementia.

That got me to thinking. Aren’t those sign-wielding, gun-toting, anti-government crackpots that have been braying and bullying their way through healthcare town halls the same folks pushing for an amendment to the Constitution defending marriage? Apparently, it’s more important to these people that gays be prevented from exercising a basic human right than it is to protect heterosexual couples from having to split up over medical bills. Like their stance on abortion, it’s a case of “do what we say is right, but once you do, you’re on your own.”

Once again, the far Right proves that the only thing it stands for is hypocrisy. Defense of marriage, my ass.