"Pay your bill" Health care is a part of national defense

[The Straight Story]

I clicked on such a link tonight for a local Children's hospital.

I won't give said hospital a lot of grief over this, they have bills to pay and were simply offering a way for folks to pay online.

But I cannot help but wonder, cannot help feeling, that such is wrong on so many levels.

I posted last month about Nate Elfrink - dying of cancer and wanting Christmas cards. When my first X's sister was dying of reye syndrome at a local Children's Hospital they wanted to keep her alive and study it. Then billed her mom over 25k.

Here we are in 2010 and parents are still having to worry about coming up with money to pay for life saving care for kids - yes, there are some orgs out there who are raising funds and doing their best for such kids (God bless them) - but why??

We pay our bill for weapons to protect those we love from being killed/hurt by others. We pool our money for roads, to bail out big companies that make financial mistakes that we ourselves don't get help for.

And we cannot pool our money together for such simple things as dental/health/mental care for each other and our kids???

We can create drones that can drop bombs half a world away, put satellites in orbit to spy on other countries, but when it comes to health care we have to have endless secret meetings where we end up doing next to nothing?

We rise taxes via SCHIP and sin taxes, because we don't want to raise money using regular taxes to help out. We put the burden on the poor to help kids.

You want to defend the people here? Stop focusing on oil rich countries and taking money from our paychecks to wage war with them, take that money instead and plow it into the real threat to our families and kids - disease and lack of health care.

I don't see websites from defense contractors telling me to 'pay my bill' for the defense of us. Why do I see them when it comes to defending us from the things which are really killing us??

Health care is a part of national defense.

Because the biggest threat to me and mine are not a world away, the biggest threat is here and now.

Why don't we focus as much on that as weapons?

[pengillian101]

1. Donate locally.

That way your money helps your neighbors.

Local Food shelf
Goodwill
Salvation Army


Food shelves can turn a few dollars into many meals, so money works good.

[flyarm]

2. We also have people on gov payroll as "experts" that don't disclose their conflicts of interest

who are helping "design" our so called Health Care "reform"
what a freaking sick joke!

my post about this:
Follow the Money: Your Tax Dollars Bought Jonathan Gruber’s Services

Follow the Money: Your Tax Dollars Bought Jonathan Gruber’s Services
By: Rayne Sunday January 10, 2010 10:30 am http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/23174


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7437647

[fasttense]

3. So far tax credits are the only thing President Obama has

proposed to specifically address unemployment. I know the stimulus bill was suppose to do that but it was mostly tax cuts and was watered down to almost nothing. The HCR bill was suppose to do that but it was watered down to almost nothing too.

So, what about a works program? Seems that's not politically feasible, like single payer, cause I hear absolutely no talk from the Obama administration about it.

Did President Obama ever hear about FDR? It seems he thinks he does NOT have a 2nd Republicon Great Depression on his hands. He's treating this economic crash like a little recession, much like Hoover did. Just a few tweaks around the edges and viola, the economy is back (only with 21% unofficial unemployment, highest foreclosure, bankruptcy and poverty rates in almost a century, etc., etc., etc...).

[ixion]

4. Health care is a critical component of any healthy society, however, the current system

is not about health care, it's about profit. Period. All the claims about compassion and caring and what not, that's just so much fluffy branding.

The first thing they ask you when you walk into any "health care provider" (free clinics aside) is "How are you going to pay for this."

And pay you do.