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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (2215)	10/17/2007 12:10:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42652

Social Security spends about as much each year as we have spent on operations in Iraq over the whole course of the war. Medicare costs less than Social Security but its growing faster and will almost certainly wind up costing more per year. And that's before trying to have something like Medicare for everyone rather than just the elderly. Add in the fact that wars end while entitlements could go on for centuries and you wind up with not just a lot more spending on government medical care than Iraq, but order magnitude more spending. Its not just a difference its a massive difference, so large you really shouldn't throw the two ideas together. Justifying the spending required by "Medicare for everyone" with the spending levels on Iraq doesn't only ignore the fact that it would be massively more expensive than Iraq, it also ignores the point that the two issues are separate and that spending money on one is only relevant to the other if it draws away money that would enable us to afford the other. If the money spent on Iraq is a good idea, a mediocre idea, a bad idea, or a horrible idea, it doesn't say anything about socialized health care. If its a horrible idea and a massive waste of money, than wasting money in one place doesn't justify spending more money somewhere else (whether or not the other spending is wasteful). Besides providing our population with better education and health care directly benefits our economy. There is strong reason to doubt that socializing both has/will provide better results in either area.