We Can't Afford Health Care? You lie!

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 Tourettes 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 Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) 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 10 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.

Comments

[MekhongKurt]

06:12 PM on 09/15/2009

Mr. Hastings, I agree with your fundamental starting point of looking at government spending to see where we might cut, including in the military. Look how much trouble the Pentagon had getting the F-22 canceled. However, I do find you've gone a bit far, especially in calling for us to withdraw from bases abroad.

I'm American but have lived abroad (China, Macau, and Thailand) 22 of the past 24 years, and I can assure you that unless hundreds of people in those places all were lying, not only is there a wish we remain a stabilizing force and *not* become Fortress America," crouched within our own shores. I was a bit surprised when a three-star *Chinese* general made that comment to me, unsolicited. In 1986.

I've never been in the military, unless you count ROTC, nor have I ever had any connection with any company remotely connected with defense. No vested interest.

[sharonsj]

10:49 AM on 09/16/2009

Some of these countries may want our military bases to remain, but is it as a stabilizing force or is it because we spend money there? The obscene military budget means that less is now available to our own citizens. Perhaps if we stopped spending billions on Iraq and Afghanistan we'd have the money for health care for our own poor and under-insured.

[medwreck]

02:42 PM on 09/14/2009

Great post. It's funny how few of these people that have been Taxed Enough Already can't seem to point one inch of blame toward the defense establishment that siphons something like 49 cents of every tax dollar. Keep up the good work!

[write2bheard]

03:28 PM on 09/13/2009

Great post - makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of places we can cut spending -- aid to Israel is staggering and has been for a long time. Although I realize that is a sacred cow, it seems like charity should begin at home.

[Larry Borsato]

07:14 PM on 09/12/2009

Actually I count 44 bases in Germany, not 287.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_installations_in_Germany

[LADawson]

02:53 PM on 09/12/2009

Well, the obvious solution is that the poor, unemployed and uninsured need to join the military. Then they get a paycheck, a job, and health care - all of which that are funded. The already unhealthy... well, you're just out of luck. Of course, I jest. I've posted on other blogs about how closing overseas bases, and re-leasing the services we need back from those countries would save us a bunch. The US is like world herpes, once we show up some place, we just never go away. We're still in Korea, Germany, Japan, even Cuba - most people don't realize that the reason we occupy Guantánamo is part of the stipulations after the Spanish-American War, and Cuba believes our presence there is illegal... a war over a hundred years ago and we're still there?! Why can't we ask these countries if they want us there, and in what capacity? I'm sure South Korea would still want the US involved somehow, as a deterrent for Northern aggression, but do we really need ~40 installations there? Are we still afraid commies might come rolling across eastern Europe? But really, even with "peace-time" defense spending as it is... if we weren't fighting two wars of choice, giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest people, allowing (even encouraging) corporations to set up shop offshore to avoid paying taxes, we could afford a single-payer universal health care system for every person in the country, multiple times over.

[9liberal]

01:54 PM on 09/12/2009

This would all be great, but in order to that we would have to move republicans to Cuba, and for some of them Gitmo

[customgreen]

12:08 PM on 09/12/2009

The fastest way to get health care coverage for all Americans is to take it away from Congress. When they are in the same boat as the rest of us you would see a bill passed with lightning speed. We all know that they would never take away one of their perks, so meaningful health care reform most likely will not happen.

[Tom H. Hastings]

02:15 PM on 09/12/2009

What a fine idea. Actually, what a group of good ideas!