We'll hear from former Florida Congressman Alan Grayson on this in a moment, but first I'd like to discuss last night with another old friend, Nicole Lamoureux, the executive director of the National Association of Free Clinics. Nicole, good to talk to you. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances.
NICOLE LAMOUREUX: Well, it's nice to be back. Thank you.
OLBERMANN: The audience reaction last night, cheers for letting even a hypothetical stranger die for lack of health insurance. Your reaction was and is what?
LAMOUREUX: I was livid. I was disgusted and I was disappointed. I have to be honest, and Keith you know this from doing the clinics with us. It's not a hypothetical situation.
OLBERMANN: Right.
LAMOUREUX: There are real people that are dying every single day because they do not have access to health care, and what that showed me last night is that we had this thought process that our lives are more important than that undocumented or uninsured person, and that's not the way it needs to be in this country. Health care should be a right, not a privilege.
OLBERMANN: You see as much harshness as you see kindness at those wonderful clinics. But did you ever actually expect to hear people at a political debate, people involved in a political party, people that supposedly engaged in a political process make those sort of comments and have those sort of reactions in public where people could see them reacting to other human beings like they were filth?
LAMOUREUX: It broke my heart. It broke my heart for the uninsured, and someone needs to be the voice for those uninsured. As we've talked about before, 83 percent of the people who come to our clinics come from a working household. They don't want to be uninsured. They don't want to be unemployed and they definitely do not want to be treated as if they are the filth on someone else's shoe.
OLBERMANN: Dr. Ron Paul's reaction, were you surprised by that? I mean, that's not an honorary title? That's not something -- he was an OB/GYN, and basically let the charities take over if people don't have enough insurance, you know, presumably there are enough free clinics out there to take care of everybody without insurance. Is there any factual basis for that -- that next leap forward from where he -- where he finished off last night?
LAMOUREUX: Absolutely not. Free and charitable clinics, we are part of a solution. But as we've talked about before, we're not the entire solution. I would remind Ron Paul that when we were in Houston, Texas, 1,800 people had to come to a convention center to get the health care that we need.
OLBERMANN: Yeah.
LAMOUREUX: This is not a solution. Yes, we service 8 million patients across the country. Yes, we do it without state or federal support, but we have never said that we are the solution, nor do I think that any charity would say that to you.
OLBERMANN: The debate over Social Security that we're now seeing, is this another part of the same picture? Is it all basically "I've got mine. Who cares about anybody else"?
LAMOUREUX: I really think what we're finding is that really we're all looking at what's most important for me, for that faction, to get that vote. But we're not looking at what's best for America. And I think that's what we have to do as voters. We have to find what's best for America, for our brothers and sisters. So, yes, I think that's exactly what's happening.
OLBERMANN: We've been hearing a lot about the upcoming election, that it's going to be about that it is right now about what sort of a country we are or what sort of country we may become. And based on the audience reaction last night and its reaction to that death-penalty issue and the horrible number that they seemed so proud of last week, in your opinion, what are we becoming?
LAMOUREUX: I'll tell you one thing, the people that I have worked with at these clinics, 17,000 volunteers that have come because of you and this show and our other outreach efforts, we are not that America. We are the America that feels that we should take care of our brothers and sisters. We are the Americans who volunteers to give our time to give that health care. So what did we see? We saw a group of people who wanted to have a mob mentality and clap. But I have faith that the rest of us are not that way.
OLBERMANN: I hope you're right, and I think you just hit it on the head with the mob mentality. That's exactly what we saw in action. Nicole Lamoureux, the executive director of the National Association of Free Clinics. And If you haven't met Nicole before, one of the saints here. Donations always accepted at freeclinics.us. Thanks as ever, Nicole.
LAMOUREUX: Thank you.
