Thursday, February 05, 2009

Why Not Cut Military Spending?

By David Swanson
February 5, 2009

In the ordinary course of things in Washington, D.C., and on television, there are two separate conversations.

Read on.
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pentagon pays for 'feels good lies and half truths in US, EU and Middle East media's with US taxpayer paid multi-billion budget for propaganda purposes.

So, must we allow social programs to be (((dumped))) to keep these Pentagon ghouls in 'computer ink?'

TheAZCowBoy
Tombstone, AZ.

DBA: IDidntVote4TheBassTerd@msn.com

Sat Feb 07, 04:09:00 PM 2009
libhom said...

Ending the Iraq War would be a great place to start.

Sun Feb 08, 05:07:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

Hidden in the "Stimulus" bill is a plan to cut spending for medical care for Senior Citizens....so cuts in military spending will be safe:

http://www.bloomberg.com/
apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Betsy McCaughey at Betsymross@aol.com

Tue Feb 10, 11:41:00 AM 2009

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