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["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

> Sure there are worse things than dying like the way those kids will die 
> and
> how they will feel leading up to death.  However, there is no excuse for
> children not getting medical care while our tax dollars go to make some 
> fat
> cats richer off Iraq.

It wouldn't matter how much money we didn't spend in Iraq; it doesn't 
necessarily mean the availability of more funds for medical needs here. 
Medical care such as we are talking about here is kept artificially scarce 
specifically so that it can be kept artificially expensive.  The very last 
thing in the universe that anybody in the health care industry would want 
would be, for example, an entire course of treatment for childhood leukemia 
to cost $5000.    Would health insurance companies want that?  No way, if a 
major disease could be treated for the price of a used car, no one would buy 
health insurance.  Or if they did, how many health insurance execs can pull 
down six or seven figures selling policies with a payout of $5000?    Same 
with hospitals, drug companies, doctors, etc.  If the real market 
competitive price of the course of treatment of   major disease were a few 
thousand dollars [and I'm not all that much exaggerating reality there], 
none of those people stand to make much money.

So medical cost have to be kept artificially very high and this is done by 
making the medical services artificially scarce.  Unless you agree to devote 
a large part of your income to support us, we can fix it so you will die. 
It's an effective threat.   So important is the guild and monopoly on 
medical services and its ability to fix prices that it is willing to drop 
its stethoscope around its neck and let some children die in order to scare 
other families into keeping up the tribute money.  Until this feature of the 
medical guild is corrected, taking all the money spent in Iraq and dumping 
it on medical needs here would have no effect because there are mechanisms 
in place to assure that the services stay scarce and thus stay lucrative.

James