I don’t understand why the USA doesn’t have universal healthcare. 19th century Germany did.
I do. Because we have a FUCKING MASSIVE military. We also have insurance companies as the #1 lobbies to congress. Congress and the murder machine aint got no time for paying medical bills, not when more bullets, bombs and no neck spec ops guys need multi million dollar training.
2019 numbers
Medicare + Medicaid = $1.4 trillion
All health expenditures = $3.8 trillion
Defense = $0.7 trillion
I'm all for getting rid of all these stupid wars and boondoggles like the F-35, but a lot of people seem to be under the impression that the military budget is many times the size of the medical industry, and if only we can get the military industrial complex under control, then we'll have all the money we need for free healthcare for everyone. Except that doesn't jibe with the facts. It's the other way around. Medical spending is many times larger than military spending.
I never said it was a larger expense, I said massive. I would also say actual defense numbers (when you start paying for the intelligence agencies, homeland "security", and putting the veterans back together the nation takes apart on foreign soil) are closer to 1.25 trillion.
It is the proportion that is an issue. Canada for example spends 10 times more on healthcare than its defense budget. Proportion is out of whack and priorities are all fucked up. I would also say spending over a trillion towards defending the country where the biggest health threat are americans having too fat of an ass is misguided. Health care costs are too high because of a massive lawfare system. There are lots of issues with health care, but probably the biggest is personal responsibility. People treat their bodies like shit their whole lives and then want to be kept alive for a good decade or more through constant medical care. Though given the propaganda of massive corporations pushing sugar, energy drinks, and fucking "fat acceptance" I am not sure who to blame.
Personally, I feel my expiration date will hit around 70-72, as like the man said, "I rather burn out than fade away" and I do not tend to hand around once the goods are no longer serviceable. But to each his/her own.
Greetings!
Yeah, OGG! I agree with you. There are definitely problems in how we spend money on the military, and on *what*. I'm definitely a pro-Defense guy as you know, but geesus, like Pat mentioning the boondoggled F-35, I admit that I'm often cynical of the Defense Department's motives, and entire procurement culture, such as it is. I know, I know, lots of this kind of nonsense goes back with a long pedigree, to for example the "geniuses" of the MacNamara era during Vietnam, where the desk-jockeys amidst the cushy offices in the Pentagon declared that the "Missile Age" was here to stay, so mounting close-in combat weapons for dogfighting on our fighters like the 20-mm cannon was obsolete. Yeah, hurredly refitting and re-ordering new fighter aircraft equipped with nose-mounted auto-cannon for close-in aerial combat cost a huge amount of *extra* money--and also cost us the lives of many brave and valiant fighter pilots that died in the air war over North Vietnam because they were under-armed and ill-equipped for aerial combat. Many of these same kinds of fucking clueless morons work in the Pentagon today, and make industrial, manufacturing, and development decisions that don't do much for providing our military forces with the best or most efficient weapons, equipment, and systems. Oftentimes, even when some new widget is perhaps *marginally* better, it still comes with an enormous and often mind-boggling price-tag.
Increasingly, I'm reminded of distinctly negative comparisons with the engineers and developers of the Third Reich during World War II, investing in models like the Jagtiger VI or whatever. These monsters were outnumbered 100 to 1 fighting against Allied or Soviet tanks, and they could only be produced in small numbers, due to German manufacturing capacity, access to rare metals, and prohibitive costs. These special, elite German tanks were cutting edge though, with the best weaponry, armour, and other characteristics. They only got like 10 miles to the gallon though, and were not only expensive and complex to make--they were expensive and complex to maintenance in the field. They also had difficulties in transporting them by train--they required special trains to get them to the theaters of war--and then, of course, they also had fits in moving on the little European roads and had problems crossing many kinds of European bridges.
I sometimes think our engineers and planners in the DOD are a lot like the engineers of the Wehrmacht. Overjoyed at all kinds of new-fangled toys, but absolutely oblivious to strategic or resource considerations, as well as being entirely arrogant and contemptuous of already-active duty vehicles and weaponry that are themselves very effective, and much cheaper, and more efficient.
In healthcare, yeah, so many problems there, too. My ex-wife was high up with a huge healthcare company, and she explained to me that, something like 80% of a person's lifetime medical expenses are spent on them in the last few years of life. Families absolutely go fucking bankrupt trying to keep mom or dad alive in the final months of life oftentimes, or the last few years, with crazy high cost medicines, crazy operations, and so on. So many problems with the healthcare. The system, the costs, the whole people's attitudes about death and medical care.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK