[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Pretty close. The Iraqi so called “reconstruction” effort is notoriously corrupt and wasteful. If building uninhabitable buildings isn’t throwing away the money, what is ?
[/QUOTE]
It’s an excellent return on investment for whichever company did the constructing.
If one is worried about the deficit then brain storming what else we could do with all the Iraq money seems like shooting yourself in the foot to me.
Personally, I don’t care if the occupation costs 500 million or 500 billion a year. I oppose it for other reasons.
[QUOTE=marshmallow]
It’s an excellent return on investment for whichever company did the constructing.
[/QUOTE]
Which is not the whole country. And it’s a very wasteful means of stimulating the economy. I’m sure if we decided to literally burn that amount of money, the people running the furnaces would profit by it; that wouldn’t make it a good way to spend the money.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
all in all, I have to say, cost wise, I’d rather have a war in Iraq than UHC. YMMV
[/QUOTE]
Come on now, Dave, this is bordering on offensive. I’m actually against UHC but one of these is an inconvenience and one has resulted in tens of thousands of senseless deaths. Cost schmost, show a little perspective.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
One thing you can be sure of: Republicans have forever lost the conservative high ground on spending. Never again will anyone pay any attention to them when they whine, “It’s too expensive, we can’t afford that!” when Democrats legislate universal health care, or expand government funding of education. The only difference between Democrats and Dine ‘n’ Dash Republicans on spending is Democrats will raise taxes to pay for their spending, while Republicans can be counted on to leave the check on the table for their grandkids to pay.
[/QUOTE]
I had a paper route in the early 80’s. I still remember picking up the papers one day and seeing a little blurb that the national debt had gone over 1 trillion dollars (story on page A7, or whatever). That was during the Reagan administration. I’m not sure, ultimately, how much credit or blame the president deserves for the deficit, but the only time since then that the budget was balanced was during the only democratic presidency.
The idea of fiscally reckless democrats will probably outlive me, true or not. As a great political satirist once said, the less you plan to do about something, the more you must talk about it.
[QUOTE=Cisco]
Come on now, Dave, this is bordering on offensive. I’m actually against UHC but one of these is an inconvenience and one has resulted in tens of thousands of senseless deaths. Cost schmost, show a little perspective.
[/QUOTE]
Fair point, but I was responding directly to the “Well, you spent money on this, so that justifies us spending money on that” theme of the OP.
[QUOTE=Monocracy]
The interest on the national debt is a huge problem that America has financially, amounting to over $400 billion annually. If Bush had sane economic policies through his administration, we would be saving $100 to $150 billion every year just on interest alone, and every hundred billion counts.
[/quote]
I agree 100%
Yes, it is the number spent, total, for health care by Americans. Which would double the current budget for the entire U.S. government if they took it over. Pointing that out is a fair question IMO.
One sometimes has the impression that people think the overall cost of healthcare would become cheaper if it was universal.
Malpractice would go down- if the government runs health care, it runs doctors, and the government has to consent to be sued- but all those uninsured would be added to the cost paid by those currently paying. There’s no way it wouldn’t cost more for the average American, even if hidden as just “more taxes.” A lot more.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Fair point, but I was responding directly to the “Well, you spent money on this, so that justifies us spending money on that” theme of the OP.
[/QUOTE]
Actually that wasn’t the theme of the OP, which you still haven’t addressed yet.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
So all in all, I have to say, cost wise, I’d rather have a war in Iraq than UHC. YMMV
[/QUOTE]
Come, now, it makes no sense to look only at the cost side of the ledger. The difference is, with UHC we would actually be getting something valuable in exchange for the money.
[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
Please stop throwing that comment around out of context.
Thanks.
[/QUOTE]
Out of context. 12 billion a month. Much of it goes to the contractors. If we don’t deal wlth the contractors we are not dealing with the problem. Your welcome.