Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

 First, I read this at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/politics/30health.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 - Congressional committees have proposed substantial 
cutbacks in Medicaid and Medicare, the nation's largest health insurance 
programs, which together cover more than one-fourth of all Americans.

[Didn't Bush just push for, and Congress pass, a big Medicare benefits 
package widely considered to most benefit pharmaceutical companies?]

The two houses of Congress are expected to approve the changes in the next 
two weeks as part of competing bills to slow the growth of federal 
spending. Negotiators from the two chambers would then try to work out the 
differences.

The House bill would take all of its savings from Medicaid, the program for 
low-income people, while leaving Medicare, the program for those 65 and 
older and the disabled, untouched, as the Bush administration wants. By 
contrast, the Senate bill would squeeze savings from both programs.

Under the House bill, states would gain sweeping authority to charge 
premiums, increase co-payments and trim benefits for Medicaid recipients, 
so benefit packages would look more like the private insurance provided by 
employers.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that these changes would save the 
federal government more than $4 billion in the next five years, with 
savings of more than $3 billion for the states.

[Then I think, hey, $7 billion is a lot of money, but the way the DC 
Whorehouse throws the stuff around, it's peanuts, but, gee, am I right or 
wrong on this thinking?] So I do a quick check and find this at:

http://www.ips-dc.org/iraq/quagmire/

  *  According to current estimates, the cost of the Iraq War could exceed 
$700 billion. In current dollars, the Vietnam War cost U.S. taxpayers $600 
billion.
    * Operations costs in Iraq are estimated at $5.6 billion per month in 
2005. By comparison, the average cost of U.S. operations in Vietnam over 
the eight-year war was $5.1 billion per month, adjusting for inflation.
    * Staying in Iraq and Afghanistan at current levels would nearly 
double the projected federal budget deficit over the next decade.
    * Since 2001, the U.S. has deployed more than 1 million troops to Iraq 
and Afghanistan.
    * Broken down per person in the United States, the cost so far is 
$727, making the Iraq War the most expensive military effort in the last 60 
years.
    * The number of journalists killed reporting the Iraq War (66) has 
exceeded the number of journalists killed reporting on the Vietnam War (63).

[So here is this citizen-taxpayer, me, thinking, wow, 5.6 BILLION PER MONTH 
to keep the Cheney/Bush fiasco going, compared to 7 billion over 5 years, 
let's see, that's 1.4 BILLION PER YEAR, if I have my zeros and commas 
correct, in cutbacks in substantial cutbacks to health care for more than a 
quarter of my fellow citizens.]

Beyond pure hypocrisy, egregious shamefulness and inhumanity, can anyone 
show me anything approaching logic here?

While I have your attention, does anyone out there wonder why I refer to 
the U.S. Congress as the D.C. Whorehouse?