Topic: We Can't Afford Health Care? You Lie!
Dragoness's photo
Thu 09/17/09 09:40 AM
Edited by Dragoness on Thu 09/17/09 09:42 AM
Truthout Original

We Can't Afford Health Care? You Lie!
Wednesday 16 September 2009

by: Tom H. Hastings, t r u t h o u t | Perspective



While $1 trillion is being spent on war, unemployment continues to rise and people continue to lose their health care. (Photo: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t)
We see the spectacle of the US Congress unable to manage decent health care reform that will actually enable the American citizenry to join the rest of the industrialized world in having health care for all. The problems, it is clear, come from those who are lying.

Death panels? That's true - we already have them. Insurance companies deny care to Americans, who then die as a result. It happens every day, Sarah Palin - but ascribing that to the Obama plan is untrue. In fact, those corporate death panels would be outlawed.

Find the language in Obama's bill that says that illegal aliens are covered or admit it's a canard - God forbid we should help some migrant worker who is stricken by illness or accident while laboring in service to Americans. South Carolina's Joe Wilson is just the Tourette tip of a dissembling iceberg.

We can't afford the plan? That is a whopper. It's all choice.

If every child in America doesn't have health care, but we own more than 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than half of them on board a fleet of 18 extremely expensive Trident submarines ready to fight the Soviets (Hey! Where'd they go?), isn't it time to ask some fundamental questions? One is: Why spend $16.5 billion just on the Department of Energy nuclear weapons budget for FY 2010 with 50 million uninsured citizens? Does US Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) speak for us all when he calls health care a privilege (and presumably threatening life on Earth is a human right for the US military)?

When our working poor are so often without either the money to pay for health insurance or the high costs of health care for ailing family members, and yet we somehow manage to justify spending in excess of $915 billion on the so-called War on Terror, shouldn't we engage in some national discussion about priorities?

$1 trillion for war while unemployment pushes ten percent in more and more states is unconscionable. Unemployment means a loss of health care for a high percentage of those who lose jobs and more foreclosures on the American dream of home ownership every month. Historically, it naturally correlates with increases in crime. The US is the last of the so-called developed countries to fail to insure the unemployed and underemployed, and we have the highest crime rates. So many thousands of us are shot each year that we more than qualify to be considered at war inside our own borders. Much of that carnage relates to social problems like unemployment, lack of health care and simple hopelessness.

Does it not seem that when the US can afford and not question nearly 1,000 military bases on other people's sovereign soil - 287 of them in Germany alone - that we can afford to create jobs? Rather than have our young people learning how to hurt others in the military, we could end economic conscription, lower the crime rate, drastically reduce the numbers of uninsured, reverse the home foreclosure numbers and enhance our nation's productivity by offering minimum wage jobs to anyone willing to work. Those jobs would include housing in some cases, health care benefits in all cases and on-the-job training and supplementary education for those needing it. Closing foreign military bases until these programs were paid for would be a giant leap for the US back toward the health of our workforce, our economy, our educational system and our very citizenry.

No one is talking about this? True. So, it's time to start.



http://www.truthout.org/091609R

Ladylid2012's photo
Thu 09/17/09 10:05 AM
priorities rearranged.... a shift in perception is needed

Dragoness's photo
Thu 09/17/09 10:18 AM

priorities rearranged.... a shift in perception is needed


:thumbsup:

no photo
Thu 09/17/09 10:27 AM

priorities rearranged.... a shift in perception is needed


absolutely.

heavenlyboy34's photo
Thu 09/17/09 10:46 AM
I'll grant that it is time to shrink down the military-industrial complex. glasses

Ladylid2012's photo
Thu 09/17/09 10:48 AM
Save lives instead of snuff them out...what a concept.

willing2's photo
Thu 09/17/09 10:52 AM

I'll grant that it is time to shrink down the military-industrial complex. glasses

I agree.
Let's look at how much Big Business, "Corporations", and the Gov. would stand to lose. How many more jobs would be lost if there were no war.

jamesfortville's photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:25 AM

I'll grant that it is time to shrink down the military-industrial complex. glasses


Did anybody read about that woman who walked down the side walk in front of a Moslem house of worship and fort that reason and no other they, the Moslems went on a killing rampage and killed 15000 Christens.

Quietman_2009's photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:26 AM
Edited by Quietman_2009 on Thu 09/17/09 11:27 AM
15,000?

that should have been in the news

jamesfortville's photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:36 AM

15,000?

that should have been in the news

The New York Time’s model use to be “All The News That’s fit to Print” now it’s something like "All the News they Want to Print”.





no photo
Thu 09/17/09 12:02 PM
that article seem naive...

let's keep printing money... so much that no other country will buy our debt ...then the Gov't can take out more debt to pay the debt....

It's like taking out a new credit card to pay off the old one.......


Shifting money we do not have from one expenditure to the next....


"Brilliant"

no photo
Thu 09/17/09 12:15 PM

I'll grant that it is time to shrink down the military-industrial complex. glasses


Personally I wouldn't mind seeing that myself, or at least the massive waste in it, but I dont' see that happening for real any time soon.

no photo
Thu 09/17/09 12:33 PM


I'll grant that it is time to shrink down the military-industrial complex. glasses


Did anybody read about that woman who walked down the side walk in front of a Moslem house of worship and fort that reason and no other they, the Moslems went on a killing rampage and killed 15000 Christens.



Would you have a link for that? I can't find anything on the internet about that, and it would probably hit the internet first. I could be wrong but it does appear that the internet knows before the news.

AndrewAV's photo
Thu 09/17/09 06:42 PM
Edited by AndrewAV on Thu 09/17/09 06:44 PM

priorities rearranged.... a shift in perception is needed


The irony: We can pull back that entire $1T military budget (if that's the actual figure. I honestly have no idea what that is currently).



...and we'll still be in the red for the year. therefore, we STILL cannot afford healthcare. You can't exchange one credit-funded mission for another. We need to ween from the credit altogether.

That being said, we definitely need to scale down the military complex we currently have. There is no need for tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in Germany and Japan. A base or two for monitoring as necessary would be acceptable to me, but we are far too spread out. Think Rome a few decades before the downfall.

jamesfortville's photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:26 PM
.



Would you have a link for that? I can't find anything on the internet about that, and it would probably hit the internet first. I could be wrong but it does appear that the internet knows before the news.




It happened several years ago in Africa. The point I’m trying to make, it’s no time to cut back on our military.

no photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:42 PM
Edited by boo2u on Thu 09/17/09 11:44 PM


priorities rearranged.... a shift in perception is needed


The irony: We can pull back that entire $1T military budget (if that's the actual figure. I honestly have no idea what that is currently).



...and we'll still be in the red for the year. therefore, we STILL cannot afford healthcare. You can't exchange one credit-funded mission for another. We need to ween from the credit altogether.

That being said, we definitely need to scale down the military complex we currently have. There is no need for tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in Germany and Japan. A base or two for monitoring as necessary would be acceptable to me, but we are far too spread out. Think Rome a few decades before the downfall.


I do not believe we can not afford health care. I would have to believe we are incapable of making it happen by reigning in the insurers and cutting waste and etc. And I don't believe that. What i do believe is that we would consider cutting off our nose to spite by not doing it.

no photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:51 PM
Edited by boo2u on Thu 09/17/09 11:52 PM


It happened several years ago in Africa. The point I’m trying to make, it’s no time to cut back on our military.



I do not think we will ever change what makes these people willing to kill us by endless war. I sincerly believe this is a war between two powerful religions. Both of them with similar goals for world dominance. Is that crazy?

Ladylid2012's photo
Thu 09/17/09 11:54 PM



It happened several years ago in Africa. The point I’m trying to make, it’s no time to cut back on our military.



I do not think we will ever change what makes these people willing to kill us by endless war. I sincerly believe this is a war between two powerful religions. Both of them with similar goals for world dominance. Is that crazy?


yeah, that is crazy, that's what so crazy about it..drinker