Tom Coburn Thinks Seniors Should Pay for Health Care by Baking Cookies & Bartering Chickens

Coburn said much the same thing later at Integris Mayes County Medical Center in Pryor, where he encountered a little more hostility to his proposed cuts to Medicare and veterans benefits.

"Show me where in the Constitution the federal government is responsible for your health care?" Coburn said.

He went on to say that government programs such as Medicare are primarily responsible for rapidly rising health-care costs, and that Medicare has made the medical system worse.

"You can't tell me the system is better now than it was before Medicare," he said.

Coburn agreed that some people received poor care - or no care - before Medicare was enacted in the 1960s, but said communities worked together to make sure most people received needed medical attention.

He also conceded that doctors and hospitals often went unpaid for their efforts, or accepted baked goods or chickens in partial payment.

Obama's "intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him," he said.

"As an African-American male," Coburn said, Obama received "tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs."