I certainly agree with you that healthcare funding will cost us more than the entire Iraq Invasion from 2003 to today. I think the real issue here is that the purpose of health care is keep Americans in good health; what is the purpose of the war in Iraq? The purpose keeps changing, and the only thing the Bush Administration is certain of about Iraq is that we simply cannot withdraw and admit defeat.

If your answer is that the war is being waged to improve the lives of the Iraqis, I would have to respond by asking why so many billions of American tax dollars have to be spent on Iraqis? Doesn’t this country donate enough money to the international community?

As for the reason for the high prices of health care, one only has to look towards the 600+ lobbyists of the pharmaceutical industry that currently permeate in Capitol Hill. The Food and Drug Administration ushers in regulations that keep federal agencies like Veterans Affairs and Medicare from negotiating lower prices when they buy prescription drugs in bulk. Basically, the government forces itself to buy drugs at whatever price the drug companies charge.

Furthermore, people on government medical insurance can only get prescriptions for drugs that are FDA approved. There have been numerous FDA recalls over the last few years for medications like Vioxx, Avandia and Meridia which has some deadly side effects unknown by the FDA such as an increase in heart failure. This makes me believe that the only thing a drug manufacturer needs to acquire FDA approval is a big fat bribe to the Congress members whose committees oversee the FDA. Therefore, only manufacturers who are FDA approved will have exclusive access to millions of Americans who are enrolled in state-run health insurance plans. This eliminates their competition who would’ve tried to sell medications for less.

Insurance also makes things expensive, as hospitals and clinics spend a lot of money just to hire people to process the mountain of insurance paperwork. Insurance also tells patients which doctors they can and cannot be seen by, what prescription medications they can obtain and what procedures are and aren’t covered by insurance. And since Medicaid/Medicare patients don’t have to pay for the doctor visits, procedures, surgeries and hospital stays, hospitals charge whatever they want and the government pays the bill. Some health care professionals and patients even engage in health insurance fraud which robs the state of millions and billions more are spent to investigate shady Medicaid claims and try to catch the frauds. I guess the hospitals figure if the state is willing to pay whatever doctors charge, why not go the extra mile and charge the state for services that were never rendered to patients?

John Stossel of 20/20 offered a great analogy: What if the government provided food for poor families the way they do with health care? We’d have grocery insurance, and families wouldn’t care how much their groceries spent or even know how much they were. That’s why I believe state-sponsored health insurance should be abolished and replaced with a simpler system identical to that of food stamps: recipients receive a
set amount of funds on their Medicaid/Medicare cards based on how many people are in their household and what, if any, medical conditions exist that would warrant increased visits, medication or special medical care. Then doctors and drug manufacturers would actually compete for patients’ business and set prices lower the way supermarkets who accept food stamps do today.

After that, the fucking FDA should be completely dismantled. That would also decrease government spending.

As for war vs healthcare…that depends. For example, given high opportunity costs, do you think it would have been better for the US to have invested more in WWII or healthcare for its citizens between 1938 and 1945? Its not an easy answer - both, health and security, seem pretty fundamental to me. Of course this assumes security is at issue in the war being fought, and whether the government program is really addressing the health of its citizenry…two very debatable points on their own.

Do you think that war spending, adjusted for inflation, could double, triple, even quadruple in the future?

Who knows? How much would a war with Iran cost? War costs go up when wars get started - neither of us can predict if a new war will start in the next four (or eight) years, but we do know which candidate is more likely to start one.

Remember - ten years ago people were talking about a “Peace Dividend” and the budget was balanced - in part, due to military spending cuts. At that time, what would a “projected future war spending” graph have looked like?

The fact that the CBO can’t predict war spending, certainly does not mean that we will not be spending huge amounts of taxpayer money on wars in the future.

And, all other things being even, isn’t it preferable to spend a dollar on health care, rather than warfare?

So on this point alone, from purely a fiscal conservative POV, the Democrats seem more scary than the Republican nominee.

I could say something snarky here I guess, but I won’t.

They made the case for nuclear energy with in the region, and now the countries of turkey,syria,saudi arabia,jordon,egypt as well as other countries with in the middle east are actively seeking nuclear power, and one of them is actively looking into uranium enrichment before they EVEN have anything being built “minus IRAN”.

There is an old saying here in washington d.c.
” Who needs enemies? When you have the democrats”.

Thats the difference: healthcare cost grows, almost exponentially each year, while the cost of the Iraq war stays relatively the same (maybe even gets cheaper with each passing year). If you look at the graph at the link I provided, you will see that even with only current healthcare promises the government makes today, healthcare will grow to cost 1, 2, even 3 trillion per year. You show me any estimate even remotely comparable to that regarding the Iraq war.

And still, even with this in our future, Democrats continue to campaign on expanding government healthcare.