"This person suffering from hereditary
defects costs the people 60,000
Reichmarks during his lifetime. People,
that is your money. Read 'New People'."
IMO, a lifetime cap of around 250K for public provision of non-palliative medical care would be reasonable, with only palliative care provided when life expectancy was less than 12 months.
I support our troops, but in this country we really don't have to make a choice between the two: we can afford both...
I take it you don't spend much time in VA hospitals.
- especially if we were to divert money from state-subsidized abortions and other iniquity.
The state and federal governments spent $89 million to fund 177,000 abortion procedures for low-income women in FY 2006... a drop in the bucket in terms of US health care spending. Abortions provided to low-income women saved many times their cost in reduced future health care spending. Moral arguments aside, eliminating abortion would have little effect on the availability of health care.
----- Perhaps you think me a cold hearted bastard.
Well, I'm equally frustrated by people who argue for unlimited public spending for people in a PVS - most of whom will be dead in five years - when we don't provide universal pre-natal nutrition and care for people who will likely be alive and conscious for the next 75 years. Or that 85 year old men should receive $75,000 cardiac surgery at the same time we underfund care for 22 year olds returning from Iraq - where an understrength military is sending troops already subjected to concussive brain damage back out into the field despite the fact that we *know* that repeat concussions are much more dangerous than the first injury alone.
These strike me as deeply stupid choices, and the situation is made worse when people refuse to admit that we are even making choices.
"This person suffering from hereditary
defects costs the people 60,000
Reichmarks during his lifetime. People,
that is your money. Read 'New People'."
No, my argument still stands: if all the money that was mis-spent, overspent, misappropriated were correctly channeled, we would NOT have to choose between care for PVS and the folks in uniform who need health care.
Note that subsides, incentives and tax exemptions for Planned Parenthood AND so on were more than 89 million, never mind the other “inequities” that you didn’t mention but to which I referred. How many dollars do our State and Federal governments spend? No other waste in there? I think we can agree that with proper priorities that there could be funding enough for both.
I /agree/ with you that we must choose very carefully when deciding where to spend the peoples’ tax monies. We MUST fund our military in order to ensure care and to support those who support our safety. But we needn’t make a blanket decision that people in comas shouldn’t be treated: we may yet find a cure.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/man-who-awoke-from-10year-coma-dies/2006/02/22/1140563841796.html
I don’t think this man’s children would agree with you that his life wasn’t worth fighting for, any less than our troops are worth fighting for.
False dichotomy.
Also, if a man has worked all his life contributing to this country, what makes you think he cannot possibly have /earned/ a cardiac surgery? What if he himself is a veteran?
Regards,
