The Health Care Debate And The Cost Of War
by Art Jacobson on Nov. 20, 2009, under Uncategorized
The Data Port
As Harry Reid struggles to bring a preliminary vote on health care reform to the Senate we can expect to hear the usual sanctimonious whining from the Republicans and conservative Democrats about the “unconscionable” costs that will be passed on to our tousle-headed grandchildren.
We’ll be passing on decent health care, too, but never mind about that. What is truly unconscionable is the money that we have wasted on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Well over 933 billion dollars, with no end in sight.*
And what did we get out of those wars? Nothing, nada, zip. Didn’t catch Osama bin Laden, didn’t get Iraqi oil, and certainly didn’t insure social peace in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We should have spent that 933 Billion on our own health care.
We can’t recapture the money we’ve spent, and we can’t make whole our over 4000 dead and 30,000 wounded. What we can try to do is learn from our failures. Let’s admit that our program (whatever it was, or is, or is redefined to be) hasn’t worked, and stop throwing good money after bad.
It’s time to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
