Cancer, diabetes, autism, and heart disease

I sound like a broken record constantly complaining about Republicans, but it does get to me.  Today Thomas Friedman wrote about an interview he had with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, on the effects of the sequester cuts.  

Collins pointed out that largely because of the sequester and the failure of the NIH budget to keep up with inflation, “we will not be able to fund 640 research grants that were scored in the top 17 percent of the proposals we received.  They would have been funded without the sequester, but now they won’t.  They include new ideas on cancer, diabetes, autism and heart disease--all the things that we as a country say are a high priority.”  (You can read the column at <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/opinion/friedman-the-way-we-were.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0>.

Republicans keep saying how the U.S. Is an exceptional country.  We are, but not in a good way.