Story highlights Ford Vox: Republican health care act sells out Americans who need health care

Vox: Trump and others reach afar to help in dire situations (Charlie Gard and Otto Warmbier), but neglect health care needs of everyday Americans

Ford Vox is a physician specializing in rehabilitation medicine and a journalist. He is a medical analyst for NPR station WABE-FM 90.1 in Atlanta. He writes frequently for CNN Opinion. Follow him on Twitter @FordVox. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just unveiled the latest version of his turbulently received bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. The bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, stands by the savage cuts to Medicaid in the House's repeal bill -- cuts so damaging that they have already sparked on-the-record opposition from at least six Republican senators, three more than are necessary to kill the bill.

The Republican impasse over Medicaid reflects what passes for a crisis of conscience at the heart of their current politics.

One side of the Republican caucus insists that elevating individual opportunity doesn't require pushing down everybody else. The other side wants a legislative win, whatever the cost.

What neither side acknowledges, nor even seems aware of, is another moral divide that exists in the shadow of the Medicaid battle. It is created by politicians who cannot resist offering extraordinary, extremely expensive and rickety lifelines to individuals whose suffering makes the TV news. At the same time, they are entertaining dramatic and life-wrecking cuts to the basic humanitarian care we provides to millions of poor Americans -- children, disabled and elderly.

They'll spare no expense when there's a name and a face behind a need, but if they don't know for sure which of their fellow citizens might benefit, pennies get pinched, and dollars slashed.