Sen. Chris Coons walked away from a multi-vehicle crash in Delaware on Sunday with minor injuries and a swift trip to the hospital — the kind of immediate, professional emergency response ordinary Americans can only wish for when the worst happens.
The Delaware Democrat was a passenger in one of several cars struck by a driver who suffered a medical emergency, according to the New York Post. Coons was transported to Beebe Hospital, treated, and sent home. He posted on X that he expects a "full and swift recovery" and praised the "prompt and professional response" of first responders.
Must be nice.
While Coons got fast care and a warm hospital bed, the reality for working Americans looks different. The same day, a 21-year-old driver in Joliet, Illinois, fleeing police at high speed ran a red light and slammed into a Chevrolet Cruze, according to Shaw Local. The fleeing driver suffered life-threatening injuries and had to be airlifted from Saint Joseph Medical Center to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood — a second hospital, by helicopter, just to get adequate treatment. The driver and two adult passengers in the Chevrolet he hit suffered injuries too, though not life-threatening. No senator showed up to thank anyone. And in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, a motorcyclist was injured in a crash involving an alleged drunk driver, cleveland.com reports — the kind of routine, quiet tragedy that barely makes the blotter. The drunk driver was arrested and carted off to county jail. The motorcyclist's condition? Not worth mentioning, apparently.
The contrast writes itself. Coons — a reliable Biden rubber-stamp who votes for every big-spending bill that comes down the pike — gets into a crash and the system snaps to attention. Paramedics arrive promptly. Doctors treat him. He's home by evening, posting grateful notes on social media. Working Americans get whatever's left: helicopters to distant hospitals, police blotters, and overcrowded ERs.
Coons has spent years in the Senate backing policies that balloon federal spending while delivering little measurable improvement in emergency infrastructure for the people who actually pay the bills. Delaware, his home state, ranks near the bottom nationally for emergency medical services response times in rural areas. That's not Coons' fault alone — it's a bipartisan failure. But it is his record.
None of the three outlets covering these crashes drew the connection. The Post framed Coons' story as straight news — minor injuries, full recovery expected. Shaw Local buried the human cost in police-speak about "high rates of speed" and "reckless manner." Cleveland.com reduced a motorcyclist's injury to a blotter item between naked drunks and a passed-out mailman.
Coons did the right thing thanking first responders. They did their job. The question is why that job — prompt, professional, life-saving care — seems so reliably available when a senator is in the car, and so hit-or-miss when it's a 23-year-old from Chicago or a motorcyclist in Ohio.
That's not a medical question. It's a political one. And the people who write the laws don't seem interested in answering it.